TechEye |  |
- Police investigate movie studio anti-pirate antics
- Samsung sued over bloatware
- Theresa May is an internet villain
- Boffins cure brain computer headaches
| Police investigate movie studio anti-pirate antics Posted: 06 Jul 2015 02:18 AM PDT
Two Pirate Bay co-founders have been questioned by Swedish police, acting on behalf of the FBI. The officers were looking for information on Pirate Bay backups and logs as part of an investigation into the honeypot scheme of Prenda. Prenda was uploading its own torrents to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads. The Pirate Bay provided the evidence that tied a user account and uploads to Prenda and its boss John Steele. It is fairly serious allegation and the fact that the FBI is interested suggests that more serious charges could be flying Prenda's way. Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij have said that the coppers had asked them for help in an investigation which has being going on for a year. "They wanted to know if I could verify the accuracy of the IP-address logs, how they were stored, and how they could be retrieved," Neij told Torrent Freak . It would be deeply ironic if the same trolls who were making a killing from placing honeypots on the Pirate Bay site was actually bought to justice by the same site. |
| Posted: 06 Jul 2015 02:17 AM PDT
Tao Ailian, secretary-general of the commission, said it filed the public interest lawsuits after investigating complaints from the public about unwanted apps. In a study of 20 smartphones, the commission found several that were sold with apps already installed, many of which could not be removed. It also claimed that some phones "stole" mobile data. Two of the offending models were a Samsung SM-N9008S, which had 44 apps installed prior to purchase, and the Oppo X9007 model, which had 71 such programs. One of the apps installed on the Samsung model included an electronic dictionary and an online shopping program. The Oppo model came complete with various games and other programs, the commission said. No-one told the buyers about the #the apps, which infringed the consumers' rights to know. "We hope it will force other companies in the sector to end the unreasonable, but common, practice of pre-installing apps without telling consumers. This is something that is very much necessary for the healthy development of the whole industry." The commission wants to force Samsung and Oppo to be legally obliged to make clear on the packaging of their smartphones what apps have been installed and also to provide instructions on how they can be removed. Meanwhile a woman in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, has appealed to a higher court after losing a lawsuit against Apple. Last year the woman told the Futian District People's Court that pre-installed apps on an iPhone5 she had purchased could not be removed and that they were stealing her personal data. The court ruled against her and she is now waiting for the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court to rule on her appeal. |
| Theresa May is an internet villain Posted: 06 Jul 2015 02:16 AM PDT
ISPA represents Microsoft, Google, AOL and the internet-service providers in Britain and has named and shamed May for her support to the “Snooper’s Charter,” not consulting the civil society and industry on this issue, and generally being a Tory. Tech and telecom companies in Britain are worried with May’s plans to hack into British laws to allow security agencies to track terrorist and criminals. Dubbed the "Snooper’s Charter" the law has been revised a number of times. Earlier versions of this bill had provisions of asking tech companies and carriers to store more user data, including users’ browsing history as well as their social media usage data. The association thinks May is “forging ahead with communications data legislation that would significantly increase capabilities without adequate consultation with industry and civil society”. According to Andrew Kernahan, ISPA’s public affairs manager, the Home Office doesn’t seem to be interested in that debate and has “proceeded in a pretty backroom way”. May has argued that a Snooper’s Charter is “necessary” for safety and security of the people. “It is not possible to debate the balance between privacy and security, including the rights and wrongs of intrusive powers, without also understanding the threats.” May said last month. MPs David Davis and Tom Watson were adjudged the joint winner of internet “hero” award for this year. They were considered “hero” for their legal actions against the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act. |
| Boffins cure brain computer headaches Posted: 06 Jul 2015 02:14 AM PDT
The “memcomputer” can solve a problem involving a large dataset more quickly than conventional computers, while using far less energy. The machine is currently in bits as a proof of concept, but can be improved into a general-purpose computer. Researchers led by Massimiliano Di Ventra, a UCSD professor of physics said that memcomputers could equal or surpass the potential of quantum computers, they say, but because they don’t rely on exotic quantum effects are far more easily constructed. Di Ventra said that besides solving extremely complex problems involving huge amounts of data, memcomputers can potentially teach us more about how the brain operates,. While the brain is often compared to a computer, the two are organized and operate much differently. According to the journal Science Advances which we get for the draw in the quantum dot puzzles, conventional computers store data in one location designated for memory, and transfer it to processors located elsewhere to computer answers. But the human brain combines storage and processing in one place, treating these as one combined entity. Memcomputers combine the storage and processing functions in a “collective state,” this complex signal actually contains the problem solution, which in theory can be easily extracted. The prototype demonstrates this can be done. Studying this fault-tolerant property could teach us more about how brains work, and how they break down, Di Ventra said. "From memcomputing we can learn for instance the ability of the network of interconnected memprocessors in bypassing broken connections, namely how robust is such a network to damage of its units while still able to compute specific tasks," Di Ventra said. "This could possibly translate in our understanding of the maximum amount of damage to neurons done by degenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s, before we lose specific functions." The study represents a significant advance in the field, said Yuriy V. Pershin, another researcher who has collaborated with Di Ventra and Traversa, but did not take part in this study. There is still a long way to go, the prototype memcomputer is limited because it is analog, not digital. Analog computing is especially susceptible to interference from noise, which limits the ability to scale up the numbers of memprocessors in one computer. |
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