TechEye |  |
- Epson 9900 wastes tons of expensive ink
- Apple Music is 10 years out of date
- Yahoo’s media boss flees company
- Hutchison Whampoa presses EU for O2 mobile deal
- French government wants to surrender to Big Content
- Krebsonsecurity sued for libel by affair site
- Microsoft’s Brad Smith made president
- Sony admits it is not waterproof
- Apple will “kill off gaming consoles” with old TV
| Epson 9900 wastes tons of expensive ink Posted: 14 Sep 2015 02:42 AM PDT
Bellevue Fine Art in Seattle decided to find out exactly how much ink their high-end Epson 9900 printer wastes, and found that the number was “shedloads.” The Epson 9900 is a professional grade printer that costs thousands of dollars. Each 700 ml ink cartridge can cost nearly $100, and a full set runs well over $1,000. Bellevue has four of them. Bellevue Fine Art wondered how much ink was left in the "empty" cartridges and took them apart. They found that, on average, a 700 ml cartridge still contains about 100ml of ink when you are forced to replace it. Sometimes they contain 150 ml or more. For a 350 ml cartridge, 60-80 ml of ink was left. So basically you are being asked to throw away 15-20 per cent of the ink. Bellevue Fine Art says it has contacted Epson numerous times about this issue, but they have not been able to get anywhere with the corporation. The printing company wrote that Epson needed to do a better job of ink measurement in their 9900 series printers. "We throw away hundreds of dollars of ink every month." Looking at it from Epson's point of view they actually have to BUY hundreds of dollars of ink to make up for the ink that Epson told them to chuck. |
| Apple Music is 10 years out of date Posted: 14 Sep 2015 02:32 AM PDT
He said that much of Google’s focus as a company has shifted to artificial intelligence, with projects such as Google Now embodying the company’s aim of using a computer to work out what humans need before even they know. However Schmidt said that Apple still has not got the hang of this with its Apple Music project. He said: "A decade ago, to launch a digital music service, you probably would have enlisted a handful of elite taste-makers to pick the hottest new music. "Today, you're much better off building a smart system that can learn from the real world – what actual listeners are most likely to like next – and help you predict who and where the next Adele might be. "As a bonus, it's a much less elitist taste-making process – much more democratic – allowing everyone to discover the next big star through our own collective tastes and not through the individual preferences of a select few." To be fair to Apple, Google is not close to producing a music service that can guess what you want to hear. It is easier for old-farts like me who don't listen to anything that has been created in the last ten years. Google AI just deletes popular beat combo artists like Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj, Lil’ Wayne, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Rihanna and Kanye West. |
| Yahoo’s media boss flees company Posted: 14 Sep 2015 01:35 AM PDT
Although the job is clearly a promotion, it is rumoured that she left before darker forces within Yahoo moved against her. She is leaving in October on her own terms. Yahoo has been planning a major shakeup in its media unit and Savitt’s job had been the topic of internal discussion for a while. At Yahoo, Savitt spearheaded the company’s brand marketing and audience engagement strategies, as well as editorial and video content across Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports. Savitt was also Yahoo’s chief marketing officer, which might explain some of the problems. Big companies that try to merge media and marketing rarely understand how the media works. Marketing people believe the media is there to help them sell their product, while the media is there to find flaws in everything a company does and tell the world about it. A media officer is damage limitation and spinning company antics to look good even when it has done something wrong. This is as similar to marketing as a packet of peanuts is to the Empire State Building. |
| Hutchison Whampoa presses EU for O2 mobile deal Posted: 14 Sep 2015 01:11 AM PDT
Normally this would have been a done deal, but regulators unveiled a tougher approach towards mergers in the sector on the same day. Most experts are expecting the EU to throw one or two spanners in the works. The European Commission said it would decide by October 16 whether to clear the deal, which would make Hutchison’s Three UK business the second biggest of the UK's three remaining network operators. The EU competition authority could clear the deal either with or without conditions or open an extensive investigation if it has serious concerns. European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager on Friday said she was ready to veto a plan by TeliaSonera and Telenor to combine forces in Denmark because they had not offered sufficient concessions. Hutchison is owned by Asia’s richest man, Li Ka-shing and has been forced to offer significant concessions to secure the EU go-ahead for recent deals in Austria and Ireland. |
| French government wants to surrender to Big Content Posted: 14 Sep 2015 12:56 AM PDT
Fleur Pellerin, France's Minister of Culture and Communication, initially suggested that payments to and from pirate sites should be blocked where possible. Now it seems the plan is that Big Content provides a list of whoever it does not like and these are automatically blacklisted by credit card companies. Several leading online payment processors including PayPal, Visa and MasterCard discussed a possible pirate blacklist agreement with copyright holders. Most services already prohibit copyright infringing services in their terms of use, but the new plan would go beyond current measures. Basically it would mean that without a police investigation, trial, or any due process, a content holder can make an allegation based on spectral evidence and shut down a business. According to Minister Pellerin both parties are working on a voluntary agreement which would see copyright holders create and maintain a "pirate site" blacklist. The payment providers will then use this list to prevent sites from signing up or to terminate current accounts. "The copyright holders will be able to report structurally infringing websites to payment processors, using their own skills and tools," Pelerin claims. He claims that the copyright holders are the experts when it comes to spotting pirates so effectively their word should be good enough. "In other words, the lists will be made by educated professionals and the actual blocking will follow soon after," Pellerin claimed. So the new plan differs in that the blacklist would not receive Government oversight. Some people fear that without proper oversight the blacklist may become too broad and destroy businesses which are not deemed illegal by any court. |
| Krebsonsecurity sued for libel by affair site Posted: 14 Sep 2015 12:26 AM PDT
To be precise, it is AshleyMadison's former chief technology officer Raja Bhatia doing the suing. He is upset about a story KrebsOnSecurity posted about emails leaked from AshleyMadison that suggested the company's former chief technology officer Raja Bhatia hacked into a rival firm in 2012. According to Bhatia's attorney, the part of the story they consider defamatory has to do with the headline of the piece and this bit: "A review of those missives shows that on at least one occasion, a former company executive hacked another dating website, exfiltrating their entire user database. On November 30, 2012, Raja Bhatia, the founding chief technology officer of AshleyMadison.com, sent a message to Biderman notifying his boss of a security hole discovered in nerve.com, an American online magazine dedicated to sexual topics, relationships and culture.” Nerve.com was experimenting with its own adult dating section, and Bhatia uncovered a way to download and manipulate the nerve.com user database. "They did a very lousy job building their platform. I got their entire user base," Bhatia told Biderman via email, including in the message a link to a Github archive with a sample of the database. "Also, I can turn any non-paying user into a paying user, vice versa, compose messages between users, check unread stats, etc." Brian Krebs who runs the site said he had no intention of posting a retraction or correcting any elements of this story. However, he suspects that Bhatia's lawyer might start issuing libel and defamation threats from AshleyMadison and/or its current and former employees against others to run the story. |
| Microsoft’s Brad Smith made president Posted: 14 Sep 2015 12:16 AM PDT
Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella promoted Brad Smith to the title of president and chief legal officer. It is the first time Vole has had a companywide president since Rick Belluzzo fled the office in 2002. Smith, 56, is a Microsoft veteran, having joined the company in 1993. He was promoted to general counsel in 2002, when Vole was at war with everyone. Smith became a Volish peacemaker. He brokered deals to settle many of the most contentious cases, shelling out billions in the process. After settling much of Microsoft's most acrimonious litigation, Smith has gone on to become the face of its public-policy efforts. He has been Microsoft's top executive on government surveillance, intellectual property, and computer science education. In an email to employees, Nadella said Smith would continue representing the company publicly on policy matters. He added that Smith will also "lead the work needed to accelerate initiatives that are important to our mission and reputation such as privacy, security, accessibility, environmental sustainability and digital inclusion, to start." |
| Sony admits it is not waterproof Posted: 14 Sep 2015 12:11 AM PDT
This might strike you as a little odd–waterproofing has long been a key selling point of the Xperia line and the Z5 has a high IP68 rating for water and dust resistance. To get this rating it has been tested by being immersed in fresh water for 30 minutes in depths of up to 1.5 metres. More than enough to make sure it survives being dropped in a loo or a sink. However, the language used on Sony’s website has changed: “The IP rating of your device was achieved in laboratory conditions in standby mode, so you should not use the device underwater,” the new policy says. What this means is that Sony cannot guarantee that swimming and snapping photos will not damage your handset, because it did not test the phone in every possible scenario. It remains one of the best handsets for waterproofing, however. The updated guidelines apply to all three models of the Xperia Z5 and you can read them for yourself on the official Sony website. “You should not put the device completely underwater or expose it to seawater, salt water, chlorinated water or liquids such as drinks,” it says. |
| Apple will “kill off gaming consoles” with old TV Posted: 14 Sep 2015 12:07 AM PDT
When the new Apple TV was launched last week, the tech press basically ignored it because it was rather dull and lacked the basic services and technology – it could not even provide a 4K service. The Tame Apple Press appears to have received a memo from Apple headquarters and has been releasing comedy stories about how the Apple TV is going to change the world. Apparently Apple is going to kill off gaming with its Wii-style gyroscopic remote. I know what you are thinking—how on earth is Apple going to kill off gaming with a 10-year-old half-baked form of technology and what will be a low res screen within 18 months? We don’t see it either. Nevertheless, the Tame Apple Press dusted off someone making low-tech games who claims that Xbox One and PS4 fans shouldn't be too quick to dismiss the Apple TV as a serious gaming contender. Jeff Smith, CEO of the popular Karaoke app Smule claimed Apple will win because it is a "developer-friendly platform" and that means more content, and, as iOS has shown, more quality content as well. "To get Sony and Microsoft or Nintendo to get you on to the platform, you have to have a custom deal, and they're all proprietary platforms. With Apple bringing tvOS, which is a subset of iOS, onto a console-like platform, we think it lowers the barrier of entry. And I think you'll see a lot more developers on the console market than ever before," Eh? Apple's tvOS more open than Microsoft and Sony? But even if they were, the operating systems involved in the Xbox and Playstation are leagues ahead of tvOS. The tvOS powers a mobile phone chip, which can just about manage an HD telly, while the Xbox and Playstation have serious graphics chips, while the Apple TV does not. Forbes does admit that this all has a problem, although the serious issues are buried in the last paragraph. Kindle Fire TV might have had similar capabilities as the Apple TV, but such a small market share made it a losing game for any developers who wanted to make a profit on the platform. Apple at least has a way of motivating developers to make stuff for its platforms. |
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