Month: February 2018

Remove the DRM from iTunes movies with TunesKit

More and more people watch movies and TV shows at home, exclusively through the use of streaming services like Hulu or Netflix, but I’m not one of them. I’m not against streaming: the problem is that my partner and I live, full-time, in a 40 foot long motorhome, puttering around North and Central America. A lot of times, our rambles take us to places where the Internet connectivity is lousy. The upload/download speeds we get from RV parks or in the parking lots we surf are good enough for me to do my work online, but make for a buffering-filled nightmare if I even think about streaming anything. And if we decide to camp for a few weeks in a national park, I have to travel back towards civilization and a cellphone signal, just to check my email. We read a lot of books, but we both love movies. To keep us entertained, I’ve collected a hard drive full of just over 500 movies, and close to 300 hours of TV shows. Some are ripped from DVDs that I bought over the years, but most of them were purchased and downloaded from Apple. For the last several years, I’ve had a real hate on for iTunes. So far as software goes, it’s twitchy, slow and far from user friendly. I can’t count how many times that iTunes has lost the artwork for the movies that I own. It makes me a little nuts. I also absolutely loathe iOS 11’s TV app. It takes forever to show me what movies I have loaded on my tablet or phone and, as I don’t stream, I find it’s constant suggestions of what to watch really intrusive. Sadly, since Apple locks the video content they sell with DRM, there’s not a lot of options for freeing yourself from either app. Unless you’re prepared to spend some cash. While it’s far from perfect, I found that TunesKit’s $40 DRM Media Converter will rip the digital rights management locks right out of iTunes purchased content. Would Apple frown on this? Yep. But I have a hard time caring: If I buy something, I should be able to do what ever I damn well please with it. In this case, what I please involves my using apps and hardware other than those approved by Apple to watch the films I own. For this purpose the utility that Tuneskit’s software provides works a treat. To use it, all you have to do is open Tuneskit on your computer. Tuneskit, in turn, will access your iTunes library. This allows you to choose which of your iTunes videos you want to strip of their DRM. The amount of time that it takes to create a DRM-free copy of each video file you feed into the software depends on how long the video in question is. On the whole, I found the user experience to be relatively fast and frustration free. Almost. After buying the Mac OS version of the software, I discovered that it isn’t compatible with Mac OS High Sierra. A quick email conversation with Tuneskit’s support department revealed that the latest version of the operating system made the application unusable. Because of this, they offered me a license for the Windows version of the software. After installing it on my MacBook’s Bootcamp partition, the app worked perfectly. Since then, I’m able to watch videos purchased through iTunes using any iOS video app I want to, on my computer or Android handset. If you’re so inclined, you can still watch your videos and transfer them to your iPhone using iTunes, too. It’s worth mentioning that the software works on content rented from iTunes as well. But removing the DRM from rented videos to keep after the rental period is up is theft, plain and simple. Do what’s right for you. If you’ve had enough of being told by Apple what to do with the movies you own, I think Tuneskit’s a pretty good way to go. Screen capture: Seamus Bellamy

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Remove the DRM from iTunes movies with TunesKit

Apple to repair iPhone 7s with ‘no service’ bug for free

Today Apple announced it’s launching a repair program for a “small percentage” of iPhone 7 owners who are affected by a “no service” issue. Late last year MacRumors said Apple was investigating the problem and appeared ready to replace affected devices, which would display “No service” in their status bar even when cell signal was clearly available. The cause of the problem is apparently a failed component on the logic board, and Apple says affected units (with model #s A1660, A1679, and A1780) extend through its entire production run from September 2016 until now. If your unit is on the list then Apple will fix it free of charge (within two years of the original purchase date) by sending it to a repair center. If you’ve already paid for a repair then look out for an email about reimbursement, and if it doesn’t show up then give Apple a call. This is hardly the first recall/repair program we’ve seen for various iPhone issues, which have recently included battery problems (that preceded the software update that slowed down affected phones) for the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6 Plus ” touch disease .” Source: Apple

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Apple to repair iPhone 7s with ‘no service’ bug for free

New Orleans pulls 46 tons of Marti Gras beads from storm drains

In temperate and tropical locales, storm drains are a vital bit of urban infrastructure. As a channel for rain water to drain from city streets, they play an important role in keeping the places most of us live habitable and our roads passable during wet weather. When storm drains get clogged with debris, the water they’re meant to carry can’t flow and things go sideways, fast. As such, most cities throw a lot of money at cleaning them – and the catch basins that feed into them – out, several times per year. New Orleans? They’ve got storm drains. Given the city’s history of catastrophic flooding, to say that keeping their waste water flowing would be an understatement. It’s a tough job, made more difficult by the annual influx of drunken, horny tourists. On January 28th, the Times-Picayune reported that in addition to the mud, leaves and garbage that New Orleans public works employees have to suck out of storm drains this year, they discovered something else: 46 tons of Marti Gras beads . For the sober uninitiated, the tradition of passing out strands and necklaces of Mardi Gras beads to boozy revelers started back in the 1800s when people parading as part of the annual celebration handed out the inexpensive mementos to onlookers. As anyone who’s been to the five-day festival recently will tell you, just as many strands of the beads wind up on the ground as they do around necks. While the city spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up after the days-long party, the beads still end up getting into places that you don’t want them to – kind of like macro-sized glitter. In an effort to keep so much discarded plastic out of the city’s infrastructure and, more importantly, the environment, New Orleans’ local government has asked that city residents pitch in by cleaning the catch basins in their neighborhood. Photo via Flickr, courtesy of Mark Gstohl  

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New Orleans pulls 46 tons of Marti Gras beads from storm drains

New Orleans pulls 46 tons of Marti Gras beads from storm drains

In temperate and tropical locales, storm drains are a vital bit of urban infrastructure. As a channel for rain water to drain from city streets, they play an important role in keeping the places most of us live habitable and our roads passable during wet weather. When storm drains get clogged with debris, the water they’re meant to carry can’t flow and things go sideways, fast. As such, most cities throw a lot of money at cleaning them – and the catch basins that feed into them – out, several times per year. New Orleans? They’ve got storm drains. Given the city’s history of catastrophic flooding, to say that keeping their waste water flowing would be an understatement. It’s a tough job, made more difficult by the annual influx of drunken, horny tourists. On January 28th, the Times-Picayune reported that in addition to the mud, leaves and garbage that New Orleans public works employees have to suck out of storm drains this year, they discovered something else: 46 tons of Marti Gras beads . For the sober uninitiated, the tradition of passing out strands and necklaces of Mardi Gras beads to boozy revelers started back in the 1800s when people parading as part of the annual celebration handed out the inexpensive mementos to onlookers. As anyone who’s been to the five-day festival recently will tell you, just as many strands of the beads wind up on the ground as they do around necks. While the city spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up after the days-long party, the beads still end up getting into places that you don’t want them to – kind of like macro-sized glitter. In an effort to keep so much discarded plastic out of the city’s infrastructure and, more importantly, the environment, New Orleans’ local government has asked that city residents pitch in by cleaning the catch basins in their neighborhood. Photo via Flickr, courtesy of Mark Gstohl  

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New Orleans pulls 46 tons of Marti Gras beads from storm drains

US dropped ball on Navy railgun development—now China is picking it up

Photos posted by a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) observer show what appears to be an electromagnetic railgun being affixed to a PLAN tank landing ship, the Haiyang Shan . The LST is being used to test the weapon because its tank deck can accommodate the containers for the gun’s control system and power supply, according to comments from a former PLAN officer translated by ” Dafeng Cao ,” the Twitter handle of the anonymous analyst. For nearly a decade, the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research  (ONR) and various contractors worked to develop a railgun system for US ships . A prototype weapon was built by BAE Systems. Testing at the US Navy’s Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia was deemed so successful that the Navy was planning to conduct more testing of the gun at sea aboard a Spearhead -class Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV).  The program promised to deliver a gun that could fire projectiles at speeds over Mach 7 with a range exceeding 100 miles. The 23-pound hypervelocity projectile designed for the railgun flying at Mach 7 has 32 megajoules of energy—roughly equivalent to the energy required to accelerate an object weighing 1,000 kilograms (1.1 US tons) to 252 meters per second (566 miles an hour). Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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US dropped ball on Navy railgun development—now China is picking it up

Fidel Castro’s eldest son commits suicide

The eldest son of Fidel Castro, 68-year-old Fidel Angel Castro Diaz-Balart, committed suicide after a months-long treatment depression. Living in Cuba, Diaz-Balart, also knows as “Fidelito,” was hospitalized for his depression but had been released for outpatient care. According to NBC : He was known for studying how to develop nuclear energy on the island of Cuba, according to his official bio from the Academy of Sciences. Diaz-Balart is the cousin of NBC News and Telemundo anchor Jose Diaz-Balart as well as current Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Florida, who is a staunch anti-Castro figure. His uncle, Raul Castro, has led Cuba since 2008 when he took over the role of president of Cuba from Fidel Castro — who ruled his island home beginning in 1959, antagonized 11 U.S. presidents and died in 2016 aged of 90. The way in which he killed himself has not been disclosed. https://youtu.be/icyD0xTIzQA

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Fidel Castro’s eldest son commits suicide

Chrome OS update comes with Spectre fix and new screenshot shortcut

Chrome OS version 64 has made its way to stable channel, which means it’s hitting your device very, very soon if it hasn’t yet. It’ll add a handful of new features and improvements, including a screenshot shortcut if you have a Chromebook with a 360-degree hinge like the Acer Spin . You only have to press the power and the volume down buttons at the same time, like what you’d do on an Android phone. It also adds a flag to make Split View easier to activate and gives Android apps the ability to run in the background. In addition, the update improves your lockscreen’s performance, presumably making it faster, and finally enables the use of VPN for apps downloaded from Google Play. While Google is keeping the list of bug fixes under wraps until most people have installed the update, it has revealed that the version includes “additional browser mitigations” to protect your device against the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. Chrome OS version 64, of course, comes with version 64 of the Chrome browser. That you’re also getting improved pop-up blockers, as well as another feature that can protect you against malicious auto-redirects. Via: 9to5google Source: Chrome releases

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Chrome OS update comes with Spectre fix and new screenshot shortcut

Women’s bladders brim with never-before-seen viruses that can kill bacteria

Enlarge / Viral gold. (credit: Getty | UniversalImagesGroup ) Plumbing the depths of women’s bladders may shower researchers with viral gold. In a wee survey, Loyola University researchers found a sac-like organ brimming with never-before-seen viruses that can kill and manipulate bacteria . Their findings, published this week in the Journal of Bacteriology , offer a first-pass catalogue of the rich diversity of bacteria-infecting viruses—aka “phages” or “bacteriophages”—in the bladder microbiome. The researchers suggest that further studies into the streaming viruses could one day lead to phage-based methods to void bacterial infections and identify disorders. “The thought that there’s not bacteria in urine is false,” Catherine Putonti told Ars straight away. Putonti, a bioinformatics researcher and microbiologist at Loyola, is the leading author of the study. “The big picture is that there are a lot of viruses that are part of these bacterial communities as well.” Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Women’s bladders brim with never-before-seen viruses that can kill bacteria

Fortresses, farmlands of the Maya emerge from massive LiDAR survey

Enlarge (credit: 21st Century Fox ) A recent aerial survey revealed thousands of ancient Maya structures previously hidden beneath the dense Guatemalan jungle, including houses, irrigation canals, fortifications, and even a pyramid. More importantly, though, the survey of 2000 square kilometers of northeastern Guatemala provides a bird’s-eye view of the landscape of ancient Maya cities, farms, and highways. That big picture view of the Maya is letting archaeologists ask bigger questions about this still-enigmatic civilization. A sense of mystery still surrounds the Maya, mostly because so much of their once powerful and sophisticated society now lies hidden beneath thick tropical foliage. In recent years, archaeologists have started using lasers to peer beneath the thick canopy of leaves and map the ancient Maya landscape from above. They’re using a technology called “light detection and ranging,” or LiDAR, which maps the height of features on the ground by measuring how long it takes infrared light beamed down from a plane to bounce off those structures and return to the instrument. Using a plane lets surveyors cover a lot of ground in a short time, and one recent survey covered the largest area so far. The results hint that Maya civilization may have been more extensive and more densely populated than archaeologists realized. The survey, funded by the nonprofit Pacunam foundation, covered 2000 square kilometers of northeastern Guatemala in 2016. Archaeologists have been poring over the data since early 2017, and they say they’ve discovered over 60,000 new structures, from irrigation canals and highways to fortresses and pyramids. Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Fortresses, farmlands of the Maya emerge from massive LiDAR survey

Microsoft Office 2019 Will Only Work on Windows 10

Microsoft on Thursday provided an update on Office 2019, in which it revealed that the apps will only run on Windows 10. From a report: In a support article for service and support of Windows and Office, Microsoft has revealed you’ll need to upgrade to Windows 10 if you want the latest version of Office without subscribing to the company’s Office 365 service. It’s a move that’s clearly designed to push businesses that are holding off on Office 365 into subscriptions, as the standalone Office 2019 software will only be supported on Windows 10 and not Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 machines. Microsoft is also altering the support lifecycle for Office 2019, so it will receive 5 years of mainstream support and then “approximately 2 years of extended support.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Office 2019 Will Only Work on Windows 10