The Dell Venue 8 7000 Series was one of the most unusual Android tablets to launch in 2015. It’s a slim tablet that measures less than a quarter of an inch thick and which has a high-resolution 8.4 inch, 2560 x 1600 pixel AMOLED display, But what really makes it stand out is the Intel […]
Dell Venue 8 7000 Series tablet is now half the price (starts at $199) is a post from: Liliputing
The Dell Venue 8 7000 Series was one of the most unusual Android tablets to launch in 2015. It’s a slim tablet that measures less than a quarter of an inch thick and which has a high-resolution 8.4 inch, 2560 x 1600 pixel AMOLED display, But what really makes it stand out is the Intel […]
Dell Venue 8 7000 Series tablet is now half the price (starts at $199) is a post from: Liliputing
The $89 device is meant to be attached to premium speakers for better music.
(credit: Amazon)
Amazon wants its voice assistant Alexa to be a major part of your entire home. The company just launched a new product that makes this setup easier to achieve: Amazon's Echo Dot is a miniature version of the original Echo with nearly identical features but a smaller speaker so you can connect it to your preferred audio system.
The device looks like a shrunken Echo, as it's a short, cylindrical gadget with that characteristic blue ring around the top. If you're not familiar with Echo, that ring shows you that Alexa is always listening, so you can ask it questions from across the room and Alexa will answer. Just like the original Echo, you can ask Dot to do things like check the weather, summon Uber, control smart devices around your home, and play music.
Music is the key to Dot. The original Echo has fairly powerful speakers, making it sufficient for listening to music in any room you decide to place it in. But Amazon didn't make the Echo with the best speakers in the world—the company created Dot so you can connect your favorite speakers or audio system to it via an included audio cable or Bluetooth. This lets you control your preferred speakers using Dot by commanding it to play music from places like iHeartRadio, Pandora, Spotify, and others.
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A new study attempts to determine just how neurobiology is being used in court.
Several years ago, Ars looked at the role of neuroscience in crime. Since then, the scientific community has continued to learn about how brain abnormalities or dysfunctions can affect reasoning and behavioral traits, and certain gene variants like monoamine oxidase have been linked to violent behavior.
But correlation isn't the same as causation, and many of those correlations fall well short of 100 percent linkage. So, while biologically reductionist arguments like "my brain made me do it" can be appealing, scientists know that in the real world things are a lot more complex.
Nevertheless, neuroscience is increasingly being used as evidence in the criminal justice system. Nita Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University, has now conducted a systematic study of how neuroscience ends up being used in the courthouse.
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The Amazon Echo is a $180 internet-connected speaker that can answer your questions, stream music from the internet, add items to your shopping list, and much more. People who have them seem to love them: the Echo has over 33,000 reviews and an average rating of about 4.5 stars. But $180 is a lot of […]
Amazon Tap and Echo Dot: Alexa voice-assistant speaker gadgets for $90 and up is a post from: Liliputing
The Amazon Echo is a $180 internet-connected speaker that can answer your questions, stream music from the internet, add items to your shopping list, and much more. People who have them seem to love them: the Echo has over 33,000 reviews and an average rating of about 4.5 stars. But $180 is a lot of […]
Amazon Tap and Echo Dot: Alexa voice-assistant speaker gadgets for $90 and up is a post from: Liliputing
Das Team von Slysoft macht nach dem Ende der Firma allein weiter. Ein Update für den Ripper AnyDVD und AnyDVD HD steht bereit. Zielgruppe seien nicht Release Groups, sondern DVD- und Blu-ray-Käufer, die vom Geoblocking genug hätten. (Urheberrecht, Rechtsstreitigkeiten) 
Das Team von Slysoft macht nach dem Ende der Firma allein weiter. Ein Update für den Ripper AnyDVD und AnyDVD HD steht bereit. Zielgruppe seien nicht Release Groups, sondern DVD- und Blu-ray-Käufer, die vom Geoblocking genug hätten. (Urheberrecht, Rechtsstreitigkeiten) Bugatti Chiron leads the new car launches, but there’s interesting mainstream tech too.
You might think the Volkswagen group would be wise to keep a low profile at the moment, in the wake of the devastating diesel engine emissions scandal that has yet to play out to its conclusion. But no, the news from the Geneva motor show is dominated by VW group in the shape of its new hypercar, the Bugatti Chiron.
The replacement for the remarkable but frankly absurd Veyron is all the more remarkable, not least for managing to get built at all in a time when VW has pledged to restrict itself to essential, core activities. It’s remarkable, too, in that it takes virtually every Veyron metric and bests it.
The Bugatti Chiron
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The Chiron is (slightly) longer and wider, significantly taller, and about 150kg heavier than the Veyron, despite weight-saving measures including the use of a full carbon composite structure, a carbon intake manifold and engine cover, titanium brake callipers, and a titanium exhaust system.
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When file-sharers are investigated and ultimately brought to justice, what kind of punishment should they receive? Are fines enough in some cases or is imprisonment an appropriate response? Sweden’s Supreme Court may soon be required to decide.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
It hardly needs to be said but entertainment industry companies see file-sharing as theft on a grand scale. They believe that millions – perhaps billions – of dollars have been lost as a result of people’s love of swapping movies, music and TV shows.
Equally, there are those that believe that the act of sharing is a friendly one that causes no damage and may even stimulate the uptake of legal products. To them, participating in or even running a sharing site is not a serious crime.
It’s a complex mix that courts have to wade through periodically in order to arrive at a decision in various cases. By now it’s clear that in the United States and Europe the act of distributing or assisting in distribution of copyrighted content without permission (outside the realms of fair use) is an offense. The big question is how those crimes should be punished by the courts.
Thanks to The Pirate Bay and dozens of similar sites, Sweden has had more than its fair share of sharing-related cases but one involving a relatively small site has the potential to draw an important line in the sand for those running ‘pirate’ portals.
Originally known as Swepirate, ‘Biosalongen‘ (Screening Room) was shutdown by authorities in early 2013. A 50-year-old man alleged to have been the main administrator of the site was arrested and charged with sharing at least 125 movies on the site including the classics Rocky, Alien and Star Trek.
The man initially denied committing any crimes but after a trial and subsequent appeal, in the summer of 2015 the Court of Appeal in Gothenburg sentenced him to eight months in prison for copyright infringement offenses.
The man, referred to in court papers as ‘BH’, feels that the punishment was unjust and has now filed a claim with the Supreme Court (HD) in order to have the indictment dismissed.
Interestingly the prosecutor also wants the case to be heard by the ‘Högsta domstolen‘ but on the matter of appropriate sanctions.
“The courts judge differently in these cases. Some think the punishment should be prison, while others think that it is enough to hand out fines and suspended sentences,” Prosecutor My Hedström told IDG.
“There is legal uncertainty there. We want the Supreme Court to determine how to view this type of crime.”
When the case was heard at the Court of Appeal the offenses were categorized as carrying a maximum penalty of 12 months but not always likely to result in detention. Therefore a shorter sentence was handed down. The Prosecutor is looking for a longer term of ten months.
The Supreme Court has been asked to look at file-sharing penalties before. In
2010 a then 25-year old a man was house-sitting for a friend when he was confronted by police officers. The police decided to inspect his computer and found that he was sharing 57 movies through uTorrent.
In the initial court case the man received a $920 fine but on appeal that was increased to around $1,200.
The case went all the way to the Supreme Court but despite the case being described by a judge as “borderline”, a prison sentence was still not handed down, much to the disappointment of the prosecutor.
However, Prosecutor Hedström feels that the current case and the historical one are different, with the one in hand being much more serious and also involving a commercial element.
“[The earlier case] was on a lower level, it was about a person who downloaded while uploaded movies. The making available was not on the same level as this case,” Hedström says.
IDG reports that the Supreme Court received the Prosecutor’s application (pdf) last Friday but it is not yet known whether leave to appeal will be granted.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
But NASA has dithered on detection and deflection for more than a decade. Why?
Scientists think a giant asteroid broke up long ago in the main asteroid belt before eventually striking Earth 65 million years ago and wiping out the dinosaurs. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
An asteroid some seven meters across swooped to within a few hundred thousand kilometers of Earth on Halloween, and the collective public reaction registered as barely more than a snigger. Various news stories called the rock “spooky” or the “The Great Pumpkin,” dismissing it as yet another near miss while we celebrated the holiday with costumes and candy. The sobering reality is that, only three weeks before its closest approach, Earth-based observers discovered a rock that could dissipate many times the energy of the Hiroshima blast in the atmosphere.
We view ourselves as a modern civilization, with dazzling rocket launches and pocket computers that allow us to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world. Yet when it comes to detecting and deflecting asteroids, we are little better than our ancestors who evolved in Africa some 200,000 years ago. We can look up into the sky, see the bright fireball, and if we’re close enough to the impact, we will die. Just like them, except we might be able to tweet about the end of the world.
Unlike our ancestors, however, we actually have the technology to prevent such a calamity. For about $1 billion we could build an infrared space telescope to find all of the asteroids that threaten Earth, and we could then fly a mission to demonstrate our capacity to deflect one. NASA, in fact, could fund such efforts with about one percent of its annual budget over the next five years. The price of planetary insurance, it turns out, isn’t all that high.
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“Sexual predator” used online profiles to meet vulnerable women.
A man has been jailed for life after being convicted of raping, and assaulting divorced or widowed women he met on dating website Match.com.
Jason Lawrance, 50, of Liphook, Hampshire. (credit: Derbyshire police)
On Wednesday, Lawrance was found guilty of five counts of rape, one of attempted rape, and one count of sexual assault by a jury at Derby Crown Court, following a two-week long trial.
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But thanks to Thunderbolt 3, hasn’t this been done already?
(credit: Robert Hallock)
AMD hints that it's working on a new external graphics card solution that promises to be "the answer" to "ultrathin" laptop gaming, according to technical marketing head Robert Hallock.
"Ultrathin notebooks are awesome to carry, but nobody in their right mind would confuse one for a gaming notebook," says Hallock. "But there's still a HUGE appetite for thin notebooks that can game. I also bet there's a bunch of gamers out there who, as they get into their 30s and 40s, wouldn't mind condensing their entire computing life down into one device that does it all... External GPUs are the answer. External GPUs with standardised connectors, cables, drivers, plug'n'play, OS support, etc."
AMD isn't saying what those "standardised connectors" might look like just yet, but Hallock promises that the company will share "more info very soon." With GDC 2016 just around the corner, AMD could opt to discuss its plans there, although a quick scan of the sessions taking place during the conference—which mostly revolve around DirectX 12—reveals little.
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