There is reluctance to take actions base on evidence uncovered by illegally hacked emails. Doing so would invite more entities with political motivations to just hack more. Republicans have just as many (if not more) skeletons in the closet as Democrats. Iâ(TM)d say these are very close to Fruit of the Poison Tree kind of findings. Add to this the suspicion that the Russians are trying to game our political system by hacking and leaking and it all becomes a morass.
The other principle is that the hacked emails lack provenance and could very well be illegally obtained, and be thrown out because of it. There is an evidentiary standard to abide by, and it applies to all evidence, not just cops.
Generally speaking, that doesn't mean a crime wasn't committed, but more evidence will be needed to lay charges. In a lot of cases this isn't hard to come by as there's often a lot of other evidence around that can be properly obtained.
It's a problem - the groups think they are doing good by exposing harm, but what they're actually doing is spoiling the only evidence of the harm to the point where the justice system cannot act on it anymore. In which case the only choice is a conviction in the court of public opinion.
The problem here is that with both Trump and Hillary, no one's voting FOR either. They're just voting AGAINST. And right now, Hillary is "winning" only because people hate Trump more. Notice how the tide turns when Trump tries to be less... impulsive and reactive and tries to be a statesman? Of course, then Trump the next day opens his mouth again and says the opposite of what he said the day before and gets everyone turned against him.
A major discovery for those unfamiliar with search engines and RSS readers.
Actually, a few of the major podcasters are wanting to charge for podcasts. They actually started to make some noise because the largest podcast management platforms (iTunes) doesn't support paid podcasting. In fact, given the lack of a profit, meant that while the pod cast section works, it's really about all - Apple doesn't put much effort into it nor the podcasts app.
Apparently they made enough noise that Apple was forced to have a meeting with them to discuss improvements.
I suppose the only reason they haven't charged yet is simple - Apple doesn't want to put much money into iTunes development and the management of paid podcasts.
You can bet Amazon is probably going to introduce paid poscasts soon...
What is wrong, as clearly outlined in the article, if the editor took 10 seconds to RTFA, is that such a deal, agreeing not to poach one anothers employees, is against anti-trust laws.
It's alleged that it's against anti-trust.
Anti-poaching agreements are NOT anti-hiring agreements. If Apple and Google have an anti-poaching agreement, employees are actually freely able to move between Apple and Google. It's always been the case. All an anti-poaching agreement states is one will not cold-call the other.
Of course, as we all know, there are plenty of loopholes - if Apple really wanted a Google employee, even with an anti-poach agreement in effect, they will try to recruit the person. It's not hard - the line between poaching and freely exploring other opportunities is really who initiates contact. if Apple (or a representative of Apple) contacts said Google employee, then that's poaching. But if somehow, through some manner that employee learns that Apple has an opportunity they may be interested in, and that employee applies for it, that's not poaching.
Hell, those things are usually done off the record - a friend of said person working for Apple may phone, meet in person or other generally non-paper-trail leaving mechanism.
Granted, being poached sounds cool, but most people applying for jobs don't get poached - they just apply for opportunities they hear about - either through job boards, or being pushed by someone to apply for a particular position.
And yes, I worked for a company with an anti-poaching agreement with another. I was practically given a job with the other company - the manager even told me I would get it if I applied (on the phone only, and only calling me at home). And yes, I got the offer.
If you're good, anti-poaching agreements really don't apply. Of course, if you're the kind of person to burns bridges and hates coworkers or even socializing at work,then yes, it's a lot harder (you often hear of this through your network, and networking is the only way to bypass anti-poaching easily).
You use the term "user input" as if cellular devices still maintain physical buttons.
As others have pointed out, it's not hard to spoof "soft" interfaces.
And you believe a hard button can protect you. It can't - because it leads eventually to the same software that makes the phone call. In fact, an emergency call is really either a special command you send to the phone modem (which is really just an AT command - Hayes commands lives), or you do ATDT911 and there you go.
At a higher level, the phone is handled by a layer of code that abstracts out the actual phone radio modem hardware from the OS, and it ends up being an API like "Dial" or "Call" at the low level.
To me, the root of the problem is the devices. The way the Stingray works is by tricking all cell phones within range to connect to the Stingray instead of the legitimate cell tower. The very nature of this design means innocent peoples' phones, people who are not the subject of any warrant, are going to have their communications illegally intercepted. You might have a warrant to tap Bob's phone, but when you park your nondescript van in Bob's neighborhood and turn on your Stingray, his neighbors' phones are going to connect to it too. Anyone who happens to be driving down the street or walking their dog around the block, their phones will also connect to your Stingray. You don't have a warrant for any of those peoples' communications.
The only justification for a Stingray type device is to go on fishing expeditions. If you have a warrant you don't need the Stingray, you just call the telco and have them tap Bob's line(s).
This is a legal problem, and it exploits a vulnerability in the cellular phone system.
In fact, there is nothing that is preventing users from creating their own stingray type device and doing exactly the same thing - OpenBTS and the like have been used to create cellular networks, and they can be abused to form the base of your stingray device.
And heck, I think it's been demonstrated years earlier at a Black Hat or Defcon where they set it up to capture users' cellphones.
And this is where the tricky part is - I'm sure an open source variant isn't too far off - but are the developers lauded for exploiting a well known vulnerability in the cellular network system, or demonized for demoncratizing the stingray and letting everyone tap into everyone else?
These manuals should give very good guidance on how to build an anti-Stingray device. Or pro-privacy device. Call it what you want.
Or how about our OWN stingray type devices?
Imagine the chaos if you're tracking an IMSI and it's passing through several stingray devices - yours, and half a dozen others. Since each is pretending to the uplink of the next, the actual location of the phone in question can be quite a distance away. And if you're monitoring the location of the signal, you're just getting the next stingray in line.
Ok, what's the catch? Why would MS spend even one man-hour working on this thing? MS working on software for Android makes sense because it has a huge marketshare, and same with stuff like MS Office for Mac (not huge marketshare, but enough to make it worth the investment for them). But Linux has a minuscule market share, which I admit as a Linux proponent, so what's MS's real plan here? They never do anything on non-MS platforms without a really good (and likely nefarious) reason.
Because probably a lot of people use Skype? And they may use Linux as well? I know a lot of developers use Linux here (they work on Android) and Skype is a fairly common communications tool, so if you want to use Skype and develop, you need to have a Windows box too. Not bad for Microsoft, but maybe enough for some companies to consider alternatives.
And corporate use of Skype is high as well - you don't want to piss them off because they're the ones buying those Skype minutes by the thousands for their employees.
And network effects - the more people using Skype, the more people will use Skype
They abandoned the Skype Linux client before. They probably got reamed out by some users with a lot of $$$ behind it, so they realized that even though Linux userbase is small, they spend a lot of money. Not a bad idea, it's what Apple does and why iOS is a favorite primary development target over Android, despite the latter being way more popular.
If a 3D printer is printing a top secret thing, don't you imagine that the people running the printer might know that any phone "accidentally" left on a workbench is a problem? Like, "we're in a top secret facility working with top secret material -- how did ANY smartphone get in here?"
Who said the stuff had to be top secret? Theres tons of 3D printed stuff that's not top secret, but plenty confidential. Automakers go to great lengths to hide the body shape of new models - cloaking them with body panels from other cars in their line. I'm sure in the design room things are a lot more casual and when people are prototyping models, they use a 3D printer a lot. Even if other automakers aren't interested, plenty of press and blogs would LOVE to get their hands on advance sneak peeks.
And there are plenty more industries where 3D printing is prevalent and people take a more casual stance to technology. Hell, many university research labs are ideal for this sort of industrial espionage - there's lots of people filtering through them, and a smartphone left nearby wouldn't raise any attention at all.
Top secret parts are not going to be printed on an "open production floor".
True, but many regular parts are While a lot of it is probably patented and thus easy to figure out how it works, obtaining the original manufacturing might be helpful if you want to know how something is manufactured. Given how slow 3D printing is, when it's used in a production line, it has to be very efficient, so even learning how the production line is made efficient can be a valuable trade secret.
More to the point, if they are chucking out this amount of RFI, it is hard to see how they comply with European EMC requirements.
Some people need to learn about screening and earthing.
There's lots of RFI you can get - you just can't exceed certain limits. Even a properly shielded and screened unit will emit RFI. Hell, cables are not generally tested for RFI - and they're usually the largest source of emissions (often times as it's only the unit being tested, the test will use shielded cables to prevent external RFI from being part of the measurement. Well, it also means RFI conducted out of the unit through regular cables can emit quite a lot). And yes, I've gone through the RFI procedure. Our product took a 1080p input through HDMI, and ensuring our 148.5MHz (pixel clock of HDMI at 1080p) emissions were not caused by the source device (Blu-Ray player) or cables was not exactly easy.
I seem to recall that orcas generally avoid hunting other dolphins and whales unless other food is scarce. Admittedly an increasingly common situation as humanity strip-mines the seas, but still - if they're hungry enough to hunt cousins it's because there aren't any sea lions or fish around.
Actually, orcas have preferences. For example, our resident orca pods generally eat fish only (salmon preferentially). However, the transient pods almost exclusively eat sea lions. I don't know if that's just how the pod always ate so they rarely eat the other, or if it's a difference in the genetics between the pods.
Of course, I don't think the sea lions can tell the difference between pods that will eat them and pods that prefer other meals.
The old fashioned method was airbags used to be triggered by a magnetic ball embedded in a 'cup' that on the application of severe deceleration, the ball popped out, closed a circuit and triggered the airbag. The same goes for seat-belts. A rotating wheel that trip and engages a cog on the application of a set amount of acceleration.
That has problems. First, there's no self-diagnostics to verify the system works. A magnetic ball also cannot detect if there was a deceleration or negative acceleration (special relativity) - an airbag going off because the guy in front of you rammed you from the front while you were stopped is generally considered a bad event (airbags should never go off if you're stopped).
Then airbags should also not go off if your seatbelt is NOT fastened - studies have shown that unbelted passengers fare far worse with airbag deployment than if the airbags didn't deploy. Also, airbags shouldn't deploy if there isn't anyone sitting on the seat - this could cause items put on the seat to be propelled towards other occupants.
And then you add on the dozens of airbags in a car and now you have real decisions to make because some airbags don't need to be deployed in certain accidents - side airbags shouldn't be deployed in a frontal collision, for example.
Likewise, seatbelt PRE-tensioners require advance notice of an accident to fire and take up all the seatbelt slack - they have to fire in the split second while the car is absorbing the energy before it reaches the passenger compartment and the seatbelt is required. After the pre-tensioners fire (which are pyro charges that turn the seatbelts), the seatbelt tensioner (the mechanical one) takes over to lock the occupant to the seat.
The complexity and potential for failure rendered mechanical mechanisms unreliable and complex.
The self-test these boxes do is also quite sophisticated - beside doing a continuity test of all the airbags and pre-tensioners, they also test the backup capacitors (the airbags and pretensioners will fire even if the power is cut after the decision is made to fire), the accelerometers (there are usually at least two MEMS sensors and they have to agree) and even storage memory (the sensor array to fire the airbags is so sophisticated, they usually are a part of the event data recorder).
Removable batteries would have done nothing to improve this situation (being banned on planes). Once a phone model has been recalled for potential battery fires, the entire model is tainted. The TSA or airlines would have no way of knowing by looking at the phone if the battery is affected or not. If they simply could send replacement batteries to affected users, or swap them right in the store because of a removable battery, there could still be potentially thousands of affected batteries out in the wild.
To the contrary, I could see where removable batteries would make the risk of a ban even worse. Suppose Samsung had made the battery user-swappable, and Samsung's batteries didn't have an issue. But a batch of cheap batteries for the model goes up for sale on Amazon/eBay, and suddenly reports of fires start to crop up. Even once the cause of the fires is identified as cheap, aftermarket batteries, airlines could ban the entire phone model because of the risk that users may have replaced the original battery with a cheap knock-off.
Surely, a easily swapped battery might have saved Samsung money in this case by allowing for an easy field replacement of a defective battery, but it wouldn't have saved the Note 7 line from being tainted.
You're assuming it's the battery at fault. As Boeing has demonstrated, you can buy good quality batteries (Yuasa is a VERY good brand) but crappy everything else can still cause them to go off.
And since the phones were all charging instead of randomly going off (like some iPhones and other phones - they were in the pockets and started to go off, or were in use), it's likely the charger circuit itself was not working properly. A removable battery wouldn't fix the problem because it's not in the battery, but the charger.
Though I am surprised the Note 7 went internal batteries given the Galaxy 7 and 7 Edge didn't. Odd
Well, if it wasn't so cold.:) But seriously, how do we get something like this down in the US? Can we also get this for the Internet providers too?
Forget it. The CRTC is late to the party.
I mean, in Canada, you are forced to buy the cable boxes they sell - and while one Canadian provider supports say, TiVo, the other's don't, and no, you CANNOT activate a non-provider provided box - the providers don't allow it. Even though they're the same boxes you can buy in the US. So if you want TiVo, or Ceton, or HDHomeRun, or whatever else, guess what? You're SOL You're stuck with the crap that the providers sell, which is pretty... crap.
This applies to internet as well - you use their modem only - even though it's got a crap router and you cannot disable it, you're stuck with what they have. (If you're lucky, they may bridge the modem so you can use your own router. So fat chance doing any gaming on higher speed plans as they use the Hitron POS that adds random 10-100ms jitter to your packets, even in bridge mode. You can't go out and buy your own modem, they won't activate it.
Honestly, you're FAR better off in the US. You even have alternative TV services (SlingTV, Playstation Vue, etc).
As I understand it, the recall effot on the Note 7 has been for the cell service providers to tell their customers to return their phones to the store they bought them from, and then exchange it for a new Note 7 without the problem battery in it. How do they plan on telling ones that have undergone the recall (and thus are safe) from those that haven't, even months later when the recall is "over"?
The problem was when Samsung first announced the recall, they didn't do it through the official recall channels - e.g., The US Consumer Product Safety Commission. Every recall that's "official" is announced there and steps to replace your product are documented there.
So despite the Samsung recall, officially, Samsung has not recalled the Note 7. This means just like the "hoverboard" devices, the FAA has to deal with a device that is known to catch on fire, and there's no recall or other safety plan in effect, so the FAA is forced to create one. And just like hoverboards (which are not recalled, either) the only option the FAA has is to ban it to prevent the risk of an in-flight fire.
Now, Samsung is trying to fix this and generate an official recall notice with the government, but as it stands right now, the Note 7 is NOT being recalled as far as anyone in government is concerned.
If you wonder why the recall is a bit haphazard for Samsung, that's also the reason - there's no official notice.
I believe he is speaking of triple A games. Which tend to outsell their PC counterparts nearly 4:1. Yes, computer gaming is still technically driving more money because of Steam and it's endless sales on Euchre clones and Bubblepop Plus. The fremium games and such that everyone plays on their facebook goes into those sales numbers, too.
Technically, PC gaming is at least 10 times as big - there are usually 10 times as many people on Steam than say, Xbox Live at any given time.
The problem, though, is the PC piracy situation - it's pretty dismal with 90% piracy rate, while PS4 and Xbone are still in the negligible numbers. So if you're going to develop a game, you're going to want to do it on the platform with minimal piracy and recoup your investment. That's generally why PC ports come later, and why they typically suck - given typically poor PC sales even with discounts (piracy, remember), you want to recoup the porting costs. (And delaying the PC release means the game gets cheaper, which helps somewhat when talking about piracy - a PC game at $50 will be pirated way more than if you wait 6 months and sell it at $30 when the console version is discounted as well).
All's not lost - there are still companies putting effort into a decent PC port. And if the numbers are really $32B to $25B, given a console's much smaller sales number (like I said, there are at least 10 times as many PCs that are used for gaming, so it's a 10x larger market), then the PC gaming market is only doing OK.
And yes, I know there's some "unbreakable" PC DRM out there, but even that is falling - it's gone from a year to a few weeks now.
This is an architectural change, not a patch for a security vulnerability. It doesn't remove a vulnerability; it changes the nature of a type of theoretical vulnerabilities.
Now the question becomes - they got rid of stagefright bugs by removing stagefright. But did introducing a new media stack introduce a whole pile of new security bugs? This is important because starting from scratch generally does end up with a pile of bugs (see Apple's attempts at an init system, or even their SMB implementation).
So yes, no more stagefright bugs. But now a whole pile of new bugs because it's new code. And parsing media files isn't necessarily easy (which is why we had those bugs in the first place).
Actually, the thing is a bit more subtle than that.
FIrst off, the court ruled that Sony is not obligated to sell you the computer you want the way you want it. That's it. If Sony (or anyone else) wants to put together a computer a certain way, they are free to. Sony does not have to offer you an option to have no OS, just as they don't have to give you an option to buy more RAM, or less HDD, or swap the HDD for an SSD.
The issue was simply the consumer wanted a Sony laptop. They didn't want the OS, so could he buy said laptop without the OS? Sony refused to do so, offering instead to cancel the sale of said laptop.
This is not like the usual case where a user buys a computer, refuses the Windows license and asks for a refund - the sale has not taken place yet.
In short, the court simply ruled a vendor is not obligated to sell you the specific configuration you want
Google's pushing cloud hard and it seems like they're going out of their way to discourage external storage.
External storage is an annoyance - Android, by default, ships with nothing that can violate patents. No VFAT patents from Microsoft needed with stock Google image. No "rounded corners" issues from Apple with stock Google image.
That's why neither Apple nor Microsoft sued Goiogle - they have no grounds because the stock defaults do not violate the patents. It's the OEMs who do, which is why Microsoft went after them for models that support SD card, and Apple after Samsung who made TouchWiz identical to the iPhone back in the early days. (TouchWiz no longer looks that way, which is why the Apple lawsuit only covers really ancient phones - and the patent covers rounded corners, a grid of apps and a static drawer, none of which are true on stock android back in the day - "widgets" were the reason why).
win 7 etc will still work just fine on it, they just won't get tweaked performance. anyone that wants to stay on older OS's will be able to do so.
Maybe, maybe not. Win7 may work to a limited extent, but if it's something like a laptop, it's probably closer to "barely works".
First off, Skylake and newer chips are not all PCIe based - Windows 7 and prior need a PCI bus to work. Windows 8 got away from this because of Windows RT and ARM support, few of which have support for PCI like buses, they added HID devices over I2C (touchscreens, touchpads), because I2C is a really common connection, support for non-SATA storage (e.g., eMMC), SDIO, etc.
In fact, the cheap Intel tablets you have only work because of these changes - Windows 7 won't work at all because there is no PCI(e) bus backbone - the SoC is really providing all those interfaces and only Windows 8 and upwards do not require PCI.
So Windows 7 would work, and on a desktop, it probably works just fine. On a laptop, not so much - the touchscreen will not work (and most likely, neither would the touchpads), if it's a high performance wifi, it will work, but not if it's a low performance one (which may use SDIO). The SSD may be NVMe, which is NOT supported by Windows 7.
Oh yeah, USB will not work, either, until you slipstream in the USB3 drivers - Skylake and beyond do not have OHCI/UHCI (USB1.1) or EHCI (USB2) controllers - they only have xHCI (USB3) controllers that have the ability to talk USB1.1/USB2 directly, but require xHCI drivers, none of which are shipped with Windows 7.
Yea, why reboot your phone and then continue to use it.
Better to just wait until you get home tonight to charge it again.
Or just plug it into one of the dozens of cheaply available power banks (rather than paying $100 on a spare battery) and continue using the phone. No rebooting, just a cable running between your pocket and your phone. Many power banks now support fast charging too. And it'll be compatible with your next phone.
Then when you're at home, plug your power bank in, and plug your phone in, and they'll both be ready when you need them tomorrow.
Or plug your phone in, wait for it to charge, then remember to swap the batteries (reboot again) and charge again. Oh, you forgot to swap? Guess you'll have to make do with just one battery. Because very few phones have docks that let you charge a spare AND the main battery. So if you forget, you're screwed. You'd be better off carrying a power bank and letting the replaceable battery happen a few years down the road when it is degraded enough to be a problem.
No, it's not for normal people, people who care about audio quality, or tech people. Sony merely created a player to cater to the audiophools with more money than sense.
I mean, Apple could've done that with their iPods and iPhones (and indeed, there are companies blinging up said devices and selling them for 5 figures, too).
And you can buy the same for less from many other companies...
This software is $500,000 setup plus $650,000 per target. So $1.15 million dollars.
Bounty hunters track down bail jumpers for $250 (if they're easy and for $5,000 if they're hard. ($50-$100/hour isn't bad for someone without a degree).
If someone is willing to spend over a million dollars tracking you, you'll be tracked. A million dollars will hire ten private investigators for a year.
I suspect that's because of the relative difficulty in breaking iOS. There are a lot of flaws in it, but it's very hard to exploit in a way that's repeatable and without user interaction. Which is why iOS exploits cost a lot of money. If you're using this for Android, you're really wasting a lot of money (Android flaws are practically a dime a dozen).
Apple's $200,000 bug bounty is probably 1/10th of what people are willing to pay for iOS exploits, which they re-sell at high prices for services like this.
And to be honest, you are probably right - it's cheaper to just do gumshoe tracking of an iPhone user than to actually hack into an iPhone to track said user.
HDMI has nothing to do with IP. It does support HDCP - but HDCP is a separate standard. It's not a horrible idea because studios offering UHD movies are not going to magically stop caring about content protection/DRM - all HDMI over USB-C will do is make it easier to create devices that support the existing required protections.
DisplayPort supports HDCP as well. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a DVI, DisplayPort OR HDMI sink that doesn't support HDCP these days. Well, maybe HDCP2.2, because it's so new, but HDCP 1.4 should be supported on practically any display device you buy today, including computer monitors.
And yes, most video cards support HDCP over their digital links today, as well. So your existing set of laptops with USB-C probably already support HDCP as well. Even when they're running Linux - HDCP is in general handled automatically by the output formatter so very little software is needed to enable it - the keys and all that are pre-burned into the hardware.
The user should assume to pay a sum of money, say, 20$ per month, in total. The actual tracking should be implemented in the browser. As you see various articles and spend time on websites, a local statistic is made. At the end of the month it can be reviewed by the user (and changed by hand) and then the appropriate percentages will be sent to the websites.
The problem is, and always has been, the middleman. The user should pay $20 - first off, who's to collect the $20? And who's to disperse it? There has to be a common payment network to manage this, and you know what? They cost money. Sure it doesn't have to be as expensive as a credit card, but they aren't free.
And then there's the case of - what if the user doesn't pay? Now you have to collect on it, and collections cost money - either you write it off, or you send it to a collections agency who can pay you 50 cents on the dollar or less.
Bitcoin exchanges do it by building the cost of running the exchange into the cost of the exchange itself, and Bitcoin transactions right now are free, but that's because the miners are still mining to get "free" bitcoin. Once the last bitcoin is mined, then every transaction has a cost that goes to the miner because miners are ones who lock each block in the blockchain, and they're not doing it for free. (So miners will continue to make "free" bitcoin for providing the service).
And that's the main problem - it costs money to handle money - from the mundane billing, payment, collections, etc. And handling something like cash is very Internet-unfriendly - people don't want to go out and have to buy credits or whatever by mailing or visiting a store - they just want to buy it direct with a credit card and have it in the moment they click buy. (It's why Paypal is what it is today - because they were the first internet-friendly way to send money between two arbitrary strangers - who may. or most likely not. have a merchant account).
And as real life has shown, the network and currency itself isn't really an issue, but when you interface with real-world things like money, that's the big problem.
there is one critical thing about the excessive heat that is being left out, the batteries are generating the excessive heat. the basic issue is that if you exceed a certain rate of charge or discharge then your battery is going to go up in flames. this is why battery cells are rated for maximum charge and discharge rate. when companies ignore the charge/discharge ratings you end up with devices that are prone to combusting.
Excepting a Tesla, most battery powered devices are charged from current-limited sources and draw so little power that neither extreme is even close to being reached. A USB powered device can draw around 2A or so, and the charge current isn't much more than that (typically 4.1V so 3A tops at 100% efficiency, which is typically well under 2C for devices that need 2A.
In fact, charging at the limit would imply charge times on the order of 5 minutes or so (10C), and that's from empty to completely full. I believe the Note 7's fast charge is 60% in 15 minutes, or just over 2C.
$60M of the $200M is the cost of launching it. They take a long time to design and build. Why not just do what they do now, and start development on the next satellite before the current one is finished? Then if the launch fails, you don't have to wait for another launch window and pay to send up your then obsolete spare satellite. May as well send up a more modern one.
Not to mention, accidents are quite rare, so companies like Facebook actually would have launch insurance - if anything went wrong, like this, well, insurance will pay for the development of the next satellite.
If it was a common event, insurance companies wouldn't do it (payouts of hundreds to a billion dollars would make for massive premiums). So developing 2 satellites is really a waste.
All that really happens is SpaceX's insurance premiums will probably go up.
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The other principle is that the hacked emails lack provenance and could very well be illegally obtained, and be thrown out because of it. There is an evidentiary standard to abide by, and it applies to all evidence, not just cops.
Generally speaking, that doesn't mean a crime wasn't committed, but more evidence will be needed to lay charges. In a lot of cases this isn't hard to come by as there's often a lot of other evidence around that can be properly obtained.
It's a problem - the groups think they are doing good by exposing harm, but what they're actually doing is spoiling the only evidence of the harm to the point where the justice system cannot act on it anymore. In which case the only choice is a conviction in the court of public opinion.
The problem here is that with both Trump and Hillary, no one's voting FOR either. They're just voting AGAINST. And right now, Hillary is "winning" only because people hate Trump more. Notice how the tide turns when Trump tries to be less ... impulsive and reactive and tries to be a statesman? Of course, then Trump the next day opens his mouth again and says the opposite of what he said the day before and gets everyone turned against him.
Actually, a few of the major podcasters are wanting to charge for podcasts. They actually started to make some noise because the largest podcast management platforms (iTunes) doesn't support paid podcasting. In fact, given the lack of a profit, meant that while the pod cast section works, it's really about all - Apple doesn't put much effort into it nor the podcasts app.
Apparently they made enough noise that Apple was forced to have a meeting with them to discuss improvements.
I suppose the only reason they haven't charged yet is simple - Apple doesn't want to put much money into iTunes development and the management of paid podcasts.
You can bet Amazon is probably going to introduce paid poscasts soon...
It's alleged that it's against anti-trust.
Anti-poaching agreements are NOT anti-hiring agreements. If Apple and Google have an anti-poaching agreement, employees are actually freely able to move between Apple and Google. It's always been the case. All an anti-poaching agreement states is one will not cold-call the other.
Of course, as we all know, there are plenty of loopholes - if Apple really wanted a Google employee, even with an anti-poach agreement in effect, they will try to recruit the person. It's not hard - the line between poaching and freely exploring other opportunities is really who initiates contact. if Apple (or a representative of Apple) contacts said Google employee, then that's poaching. But if somehow, through some manner that employee learns that Apple has an opportunity they may be interested in, and that employee applies for it, that's not poaching.
Hell, those things are usually done off the record - a friend of said person working for Apple may phone, meet in person or other generally non-paper-trail leaving mechanism.
Granted, being poached sounds cool, but most people applying for jobs don't get poached - they just apply for opportunities they hear about - either through job boards, or being pushed by someone to apply for a particular position.
And yes, I worked for a company with an anti-poaching agreement with another. I was practically given a job with the other company - the manager even told me I would get it if I applied (on the phone only, and only calling me at home). And yes, I got the offer.
If you're good, anti-poaching agreements really don't apply. Of course, if you're the kind of person to burns bridges and hates coworkers or even socializing at work,then yes, it's a lot harder (you often hear of this through your network, and networking is the only way to bypass anti-poaching easily).
And you believe a hard button can protect you. It can't - because it leads eventually to the same software that makes the phone call. In fact, an emergency call is really either a special command you send to the phone modem (which is really just an AT command - Hayes commands lives), or you do ATDT911 and there you go.
At a higher level, the phone is handled by a layer of code that abstracts out the actual phone radio modem hardware from the OS, and it ends up being an API like "Dial" or "Call" at the low level.
This is a legal problem, and it exploits a vulnerability in the cellular phone system.
In fact, there is nothing that is preventing users from creating their own stingray type device and doing exactly the same thing - OpenBTS and the like have been used to create cellular networks, and they can be abused to form the base of your stingray device.
And heck, I think it's been demonstrated years earlier at a Black Hat or Defcon where they set it up to capture users' cellphones.
And this is where the tricky part is - I'm sure an open source variant isn't too far off - but are the developers lauded for exploiting a well known vulnerability in the cellular network system, or demonized for demoncratizing the stingray and letting everyone tap into everyone else?
Or how about our OWN stingray type devices?
Imagine the chaos if you're tracking an IMSI and it's passing through several stingray devices - yours, and half a dozen others. Since each is pretending to the uplink of the next, the actual location of the phone in question can be quite a distance away. And if you're monitoring the location of the signal, you're just getting the next stingray in line.
Because probably a lot of people use Skype? And they may use Linux as well? I know a lot of developers use Linux here (they work on Android) and Skype is a fairly common communications tool, so if you want to use Skype and develop, you need to have a Windows box too. Not bad for Microsoft, but maybe enough for some companies to consider alternatives.
And corporate use of Skype is high as well - you don't want to piss them off because they're the ones buying those Skype minutes by the thousands for their employees.
And network effects - the more people using Skype, the more people will use Skype
They abandoned the Skype Linux client before. They probably got reamed out by some users with a lot of $$$ behind it, so they realized that even though Linux userbase is small, they spend a lot of money. Not a bad idea, it's what Apple does and why iOS is a favorite primary development target over Android, despite the latter being way more popular.
Who said the stuff had to be top secret? Theres tons of 3D printed stuff that's not top secret, but plenty confidential. Automakers go to great lengths to hide the body shape of new models - cloaking them with body panels from other cars in their line. I'm sure in the design room things are a lot more casual and when people are prototyping models, they use a 3D printer a lot. Even if other automakers aren't interested, plenty of press and blogs would LOVE to get their hands on advance sneak peeks.
And there are plenty more industries where 3D printing is prevalent and people take a more casual stance to technology. Hell, many university research labs are ideal for this sort of industrial espionage - there's lots of people filtering through them, and a smartphone left nearby wouldn't raise any attention at all.
True, but many regular parts are While a lot of it is probably patented and thus easy to figure out how it works, obtaining the original manufacturing might be helpful if you want to know how something is manufactured. Given how slow 3D printing is, when it's used in a production line, it has to be very efficient, so even learning how the production line is made efficient can be a valuable trade secret.
There's lots of RFI you can get - you just can't exceed certain limits. Even a properly shielded and screened unit will emit RFI. Hell, cables are not generally tested for RFI - and they're usually the largest source of emissions (often times as it's only the unit being tested, the test will use shielded cables to prevent external RFI from being part of the measurement. Well, it also means RFI conducted out of the unit through regular cables can emit quite a lot). And yes, I've gone through the RFI procedure. Our product took a 1080p input through HDMI, and ensuring our 148.5MHz (pixel clock of HDMI at 1080p) emissions were not caused by the source device (Blu-Ray player) or cables was not exactly easy.
Actually, orcas have preferences. For example, our resident orca pods generally eat fish only (salmon preferentially). However, the transient pods almost exclusively eat sea lions. I don't know if that's just how the pod always ate so they rarely eat the other, or if it's a difference in the genetics between the pods.
Of course, I don't think the sea lions can tell the difference between pods that will eat them and pods that prefer other meals.
That has problems. First, there's no self-diagnostics to verify the system works. A magnetic ball also cannot detect if there was a deceleration or negative acceleration (special relativity) - an airbag going off because the guy in front of you rammed you from the front while you were stopped is generally considered a bad event (airbags should never go off if you're stopped).
Then airbags should also not go off if your seatbelt is NOT fastened - studies have shown that unbelted passengers fare far worse with airbag deployment than if the airbags didn't deploy. Also, airbags shouldn't deploy if there isn't anyone sitting on the seat - this could cause items put on the seat to be propelled towards other occupants.
And then you add on the dozens of airbags in a car and now you have real decisions to make because some airbags don't need to be deployed in certain accidents - side airbags shouldn't be deployed in a frontal collision, for example.
Likewise, seatbelt PRE-tensioners require advance notice of an accident to fire and take up all the seatbelt slack - they have to fire in the split second while the car is absorbing the energy before it reaches the passenger compartment and the seatbelt is required. After the pre-tensioners fire (which are pyro charges that turn the seatbelts), the seatbelt tensioner (the mechanical one) takes over to lock the occupant to the seat.
The complexity and potential for failure rendered mechanical mechanisms unreliable and complex.
The self-test these boxes do is also quite sophisticated - beside doing a continuity test of all the airbags and pre-tensioners, they also test the backup capacitors (the airbags and pretensioners will fire even if the power is cut after the decision is made to fire), the accelerometers (there are usually at least two MEMS sensors and they have to agree) and even storage memory (the sensor array to fire the airbags is so sophisticated, they usually are a part of the event data recorder).
You're assuming it's the battery at fault. As Boeing has demonstrated, you can buy good quality batteries (Yuasa is a VERY good brand) but crappy everything else can still cause them to go off.
And since the phones were all charging instead of randomly going off (like some iPhones and other phones - they were in the pockets and started to go off, or were in use), it's likely the charger circuit itself was not working properly. A removable battery wouldn't fix the problem because it's not in the battery, but the charger.
Though I am surprised the Note 7 went internal batteries given the Galaxy 7 and 7 Edge didn't. Odd
Forget it. The CRTC is late to the party.
I mean, in Canada, you are forced to buy the cable boxes they sell - and while one Canadian provider supports say, TiVo, the other's don't, and no, you CANNOT activate a non-provider provided box - the providers don't allow it. Even though they're the same boxes you can buy in the US. So if you want TiVo, or Ceton, or HDHomeRun, or whatever else, guess what? You're SOL You're stuck with the crap that the providers sell, which is pretty... crap.
This applies to internet as well - you use their modem only - even though it's got a crap router and you cannot disable it, you're stuck with what they have. (If you're lucky, they may bridge the modem so you can use your own router. So fat chance doing any gaming on higher speed plans as they use the Hitron POS that adds random 10-100ms jitter to your packets, even in bridge mode. You can't go out and buy your own modem, they won't activate it.
Honestly, you're FAR better off in the US. You even have alternative TV services (SlingTV, Playstation Vue, etc).
The problem was when Samsung first announced the recall, they didn't do it through the official recall channels - e.g., The US Consumer Product Safety Commission. Every recall that's "official" is announced there and steps to replace your product are documented there.
So despite the Samsung recall, officially, Samsung has not recalled the Note 7. This means just like the "hoverboard" devices, the FAA has to deal with a device that is known to catch on fire, and there's no recall or other safety plan in effect, so the FAA is forced to create one. And just like hoverboards (which are not recalled, either) the only option the FAA has is to ban it to prevent the risk of an in-flight fire.
Now, Samsung is trying to fix this and generate an official recall notice with the government, but as it stands right now, the Note 7 is NOT being recalled as far as anyone in government is concerned.
If you wonder why the recall is a bit haphazard for Samsung, that's also the reason - there's no official notice.
Technically, PC gaming is at least 10 times as big - there are usually 10 times as many people on Steam than say, Xbox Live at any given time.
The problem, though, is the PC piracy situation - it's pretty dismal with 90% piracy rate, while PS4 and Xbone are still in the negligible numbers. So if you're going to develop a game, you're going to want to do it on the platform with minimal piracy and recoup your investment. That's generally why PC ports come later, and why they typically suck - given typically poor PC sales even with discounts (piracy, remember), you want to recoup the porting costs. (And delaying the PC release means the game gets cheaper, which helps somewhat when talking about piracy - a PC game at $50 will be pirated way more than if you wait 6 months and sell it at $30 when the console version is discounted as well).
All's not lost - there are still companies putting effort into a decent PC port. And if the numbers are really $32B to $25B, given a console's much smaller sales number (like I said, there are at least 10 times as many PCs that are used for gaming, so it's a 10x larger market), then the PC gaming market is only doing OK.
And yes, I know there's some "unbreakable" PC DRM out there, but even that is falling - it's gone from a year to a few weeks now.
Now the question becomes - they got rid of stagefright bugs by removing stagefright. But did introducing a new media stack introduce a whole pile of new security bugs? This is important because starting from scratch generally does end up with a pile of bugs (see Apple's attempts at an init system, or even their SMB implementation).
So yes, no more stagefright bugs. But now a whole pile of new bugs because it's new code. And parsing media files isn't necessarily easy (which is why we had those bugs in the first place).
Actually, the thing is a bit more subtle than that.
FIrst off, the court ruled that Sony is not obligated to sell you the computer you want the way you want it. That's it. If Sony (or anyone else) wants to put together a computer a certain way, they are free to. Sony does not have to offer you an option to have no OS, just as they don't have to give you an option to buy more RAM, or less HDD, or swap the HDD for an SSD.
The issue was simply the consumer wanted a Sony laptop. They didn't want the OS, so could he buy said laptop without the OS? Sony refused to do so, offering instead to cancel the sale of said laptop.
This is not like the usual case where a user buys a computer, refuses the Windows license and asks for a refund - the sale has not taken place yet.
In short, the court simply ruled a vendor is not obligated to sell you the specific configuration you want
External storage is an annoyance - Android, by default, ships with nothing that can violate patents. No VFAT patents from Microsoft needed with stock Google image. No "rounded corners" issues from Apple with stock Google image.
That's why neither Apple nor Microsoft sued Goiogle - they have no grounds because the stock defaults do not violate the patents. It's the OEMs who do, which is why Microsoft went after them for models that support SD card, and Apple after Samsung who made TouchWiz identical to the iPhone back in the early days. (TouchWiz no longer looks that way, which is why the Apple lawsuit only covers really ancient phones - and the patent covers rounded corners, a grid of apps and a static drawer, none of which are true on stock android back in the day - "widgets" were the reason why).
Maybe, maybe not. Win7 may work to a limited extent, but if it's something like a laptop, it's probably closer to "barely works".
First off, Skylake and newer chips are not all PCIe based - Windows 7 and prior need a PCI bus to work. Windows 8 got away from this because of Windows RT and ARM support, few of which have support for PCI like buses, they added HID devices over I2C (touchscreens, touchpads), because I2C is a really common connection, support for non-SATA storage (e.g., eMMC), SDIO, etc.
In fact, the cheap Intel tablets you have only work because of these changes - Windows 7 won't work at all because there is no PCI(e) bus backbone - the SoC is really providing all those interfaces and only Windows 8 and upwards do not require PCI.
So Windows 7 would work, and on a desktop, it probably works just fine. On a laptop, not so much - the touchscreen will not work (and most likely, neither would the touchpads), if it's a high performance wifi, it will work, but not if it's a low performance one (which may use SDIO). The SSD may be NVMe, which is NOT supported by Windows 7.
Oh yeah, USB will not work, either, until you slipstream in the USB3 drivers - Skylake and beyond do not have OHCI/UHCI (USB1.1) or EHCI (USB2) controllers - they only have xHCI (USB3) controllers that have the ability to talk USB1.1/USB2 directly, but require xHCI drivers, none of which are shipped with Windows 7.
Or just plug it into one of the dozens of cheaply available power banks (rather than paying $100 on a spare battery) and continue using the phone. No rebooting, just a cable running between your pocket and your phone. Many power banks now support fast charging too. And it'll be compatible with your next phone.
Then when you're at home, plug your power bank in, and plug your phone in, and they'll both be ready when you need them tomorrow.
Or plug your phone in, wait for it to charge, then remember to swap the batteries (reboot again) and charge again. Oh, you forgot to swap? Guess you'll have to make do with just one battery. Because very few phones have docks that let you charge a spare AND the main battery. So if you forget, you're screwed. You'd be better off carrying a power bank and letting the replaceable battery happen a few years down the road when it is degraded enough to be a problem.
No, it's not for normal people, people who care about audio quality, or tech people. Sony merely created a player to cater to the audiophools with more money than sense.
I mean, Apple could've done that with their iPods and iPhones (and indeed, there are companies blinging up said devices and selling them for 5 figures, too).
And you can buy the same for less from many other companies...
I suspect that's because of the relative difficulty in breaking iOS. There are a lot of flaws in it, but it's very hard to exploit in a way that's repeatable and without user interaction. Which is why iOS exploits cost a lot of money. If you're using this for Android, you're really wasting a lot of money (Android flaws are practically a dime a dozen).
Apple's $200,000 bug bounty is probably 1/10th of what people are willing to pay for iOS exploits, which they re-sell at high prices for services like this.
And to be honest, you are probably right - it's cheaper to just do gumshoe tracking of an iPhone user than to actually hack into an iPhone to track said user.
DisplayPort supports HDCP as well. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a DVI, DisplayPort OR HDMI sink that doesn't support HDCP these days. Well, maybe HDCP2.2, because it's so new, but HDCP 1.4 should be supported on practically any display device you buy today, including computer monitors.
And yes, most video cards support HDCP over their digital links today, as well. So your existing set of laptops with USB-C probably already support HDCP as well. Even when they're running Linux - HDCP is in general handled automatically by the output formatter so very little software is needed to enable it - the keys and all that are pre-burned into the hardware.
The problem is, and always has been, the middleman. The user should pay $20 - first off, who's to collect the $20? And who's to disperse it? There has to be a common payment network to manage this, and you know what? They cost money. Sure it doesn't have to be as expensive as a credit card, but they aren't free.
And then there's the case of - what if the user doesn't pay? Now you have to collect on it, and collections cost money - either you write it off, or you send it to a collections agency who can pay you 50 cents on the dollar or less.
Bitcoin exchanges do it by building the cost of running the exchange into the cost of the exchange itself, and Bitcoin transactions right now are free, but that's because the miners are still mining to get "free" bitcoin. Once the last bitcoin is mined, then every transaction has a cost that goes to the miner because miners are ones who lock each block in the blockchain, and they're not doing it for free. (So miners will continue to make "free" bitcoin for providing the service).
And that's the main problem - it costs money to handle money - from the mundane billing, payment, collections, etc. And handling something like cash is very Internet-unfriendly - people don't want to go out and have to buy credits or whatever by mailing or visiting a store - they just want to buy it direct with a credit card and have it in the moment they click buy. (It's why Paypal is what it is today - because they were the first internet-friendly way to send money between two arbitrary strangers - who may. or most likely not. have a merchant account).
And as real life has shown, the network and currency itself isn't really an issue, but when you interface with real-world things like money, that's the big problem.
Excepting a Tesla, most battery powered devices are charged from current-limited sources and draw so little power that neither extreme is even close to being reached. A USB powered device can draw around 2A or so, and the charge current isn't much more than that (typically 4.1V so 3A tops at 100% efficiency, which is typically well under 2C for devices that need 2A.
In fact, charging at the limit would imply charge times on the order of 5 minutes or so (10C), and that's from empty to completely full. I believe the Note 7's fast charge is 60% in 15 minutes, or just over 2C.
Not to mention, accidents are quite rare, so companies like Facebook actually would have launch insurance - if anything went wrong, like this, well, insurance will pay for the development of the next satellite.
If it was a common event, insurance companies wouldn't do it (payouts of hundreds to a billion dollars would make for massive premiums). So developing 2 satellites is really a waste.
All that really happens is SpaceX's insurance premiums will probably go up.