vanity-fair – Page 2 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Couple sues Pandora and SiriusXM over copyright in pre-1972 songs

(credit: Getty Images) An Illinois couple who owned several recording companies specializing in doo-wop, jazz, and rhythm and blues have filed suit against the major satellite and Internet radio companies over their playing of pre-1972 songs. It’s the third lawsuit that highlights how the patchwork of state copyright laws over older music is putting a drag on Internet radio—sound recordings made before 1972 aren’t protected by federal copyright but are protected by many states. On Monday, Arthur and Barbara Sheridan filed two lawsuits in New Jersey federal court: one against Pandora and Sirius XM (PDF) and another against iHeartMedia (PDF), the parent company of online music service iHeartRadio. Their lawsuits seek class action status, looking to represent owners of pre-1972 songs. The companies have derived “significant benefits,” including “millions of dollars in annual revenue,” by playing those songs without permission, the suit alleges. “The Pre-1972 Recordings, when created, were the novel product of mental labor embodied in material form,” the complaint against Sirius and Pandora states. “Plaintiffs and the Misappropriation Class thus have property rights in them as recognized by New Jersey common law.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Couple sues Pandora and SiriusXM over copyright in pre-1972 songs

Support scams that plagued Windows users for years now target Mac customers

Enlarge (credit: Malwarebytes) For years, scammers claiming that they’re “calling from Windows” have dialed up Microsoft customers and done their best to trick them into parting with their money or installing malicious wares. Now, the swindlers are turning their sights on Mac users. Researchers at antivirus provider Malwarebytes spotted a Web-based campaign that attempts to trick OS X and iOS users into thinking there’s something wrong with their devices . The ruse starts with a pop-up window that’s designed to look like an official OS notification. “Critical Security Warning!” it says. “Your Device (iPad, iPod, iPhone) is infected with a malicious adward [sic] attack.” It goes on to provide a phone number people can call to receive tech support. The site ara-apple.com is designed to masquerade as https://ara.apple.com/ , Apple’s official remote technical support page. People who are experiencing problems with their Macs can go there to get an official Apple tech support provider to remotely access the person’s computer desktop. Ara-apple provides links to the remote programs the supposed technician will use to log in to targets’ Macs. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Support scams that plagued Windows users for years now target Mac customers

Marijuana exposure in utero has lifelong consequences

A newborn mouse. (credit: Credit: Wikimedia Commons ) As marijuana is legalized in more states, questions about its safety and the health consequences of cannabis use are becoming mainstream. A new study published in PNAS finds that use of cannabis by pregnant women can have implications for the neural development of her child, and that some of the consequences continue into adulthood, So, like alcohol, another recreational drug that is legal in the US, marijuana is likely best avoided by pregnant women. The most prominent active ingredient in marijuana is a compound known as THC, which interacts with the naturally occurring cannabinoid receptors in the nervous system. Cannabinoid receptors are known to play an important role in the regulation of brain development, and this paper examines the influence of a prenatal THC exposure on the maturation of pathways regulated by these receptors. The study examined prenatal cannabis consumption in mice, with the aim of identifying the mechanisms responsible for cannabis-related changes in brain function. During the study, pregnant mice were exposed to daily injections of THC or injections of a control liquid. Then the offspring were run through a battery of behavioral tests. The animals’ brains were also examined closely using immunoflouresence and confocal microscopy. Embryonic brain tissue from some litters was also collected and checked for irregularities. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Marijuana exposure in utero has lifelong consequences

Scientists grow functional kidney organoid from stem cells

A drawing shows the complex structure of a kidney. (credit: Wikimedia commons ) There are many diseases that attack specific organs, landing patients on a transplant list. Unfortunately, our bodies have markers that identify an organ as “self,” which makes it difficult to find an organ match. Many individuals die waiting for an organ transplant because a match can’t be found. Research on stem cells—a type of cell that is able to transform into nearly any cell type—has raised hopes of treating organ failure. Researchers envision using these cells to grow fully functional organs. A functional organ is similar to a machine. Organs contain many interacting parts that must be positioned in a specific configuration to work properly. Getting all the right cell types in the appropriate locations is a real challenge. Recently, a team of scientists has met that challenge by using stem cells to grow a tissue, termed an organoid, that resembles a developing kidney. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Cage against the EMP: New composite cases protect against the electro-apocalypse

A Faraday Cases travel case, configured to keep communications gear safe in transit from unfriendly electromagnetism. 2 more images in gallery WASHINGTON, DC—A small company from Utah has developed a composite material that combines carbon fibers with a nickel coating. The result is an extremely lightweight electric-conducting material with the properties of plastic. And now that material is being used to create cases and computer enclosures that are essentially lightweight Faraday cages—containing electromagnetic radiation from digital devices and shielding them from electronic eavesdropping or electromagnetic pulse attacks. Ars got a brief hands-on with some of the materials at the Association of the United States Army expo this week. The company, Conductive Composites , is now selling cases built with the Nickel Chemical Vapor Deposition (NiCVD) composite material through its Faraday Cases division . The cases range in size from suitcase-sized units for carrying smaller digital devices to wheeled portable enclosures that can house servers—providing what is essentially an EMP-shielded portable data center. The cases and enclosures are being marketed not just to the military but to consumers, corporations, and first responders as well. The materials used in Faraday Cases can also be used to create ultra-lightweight antennas, satellite communications reflector dishes, and hundreds of other things that currently need to be made with conductive metal. And they could be a boon to anyone trying to prevent electronic eavesdropping—be it through active wireless bugs, radio retroreflectors used by nation-state intelligence agencies, or passive surveillance through anything from Wi-FI hacking to electromagnetic signals leaking from computer cables and monitors. And in some cases, they could make it possible to create the kind of secure spaces used by government agencies to prevent eavesdropping nearly anywhere. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Cage against the EMP: New composite cases protect against the electro-apocalypse

Toyota 2050 plans to cut CO2 from its new cars by 90 percent

Earlier today, Toyota unveiled a bold new plan for the company’s sustainability efforts. By the year 2050, it plans to have cut CO 2 emissions from its new cars by 90 percent (compared to 2010). Toyota also wants to completely eliminate CO 2 pollution from new car manufacturing, as well as over the entire lifecycle of a car including its recycling. These are bold goals. The company says it will build off the success of its Prius hybrids to cut vehicle emissions. Advanced hybrid powertrains will be a big research focus, and the company even gave a shout-out to silicon carbide supercapacitors. In addition, big things are planned for hydrogen. The Japanese government has been incentivizing its car industry to work with fuel cells, and road cars are starting to appear. The Toyota Mirai is already in production and coming to America, even if the fueling stations it will depend upon are few and far between. Completely eradicating CO 2 from the production and recycling of new cars is an equally big challenge. The company wants all its production factories to have zero emissions, in part through renewable energy and fuel cells. And it has goals to promote recycling and conservation around the world. More specifics are included in Toyota’s new environmental action plan —its sixth so far—which runs from 2016-2020. That means it will be a few years before we can judge if Toyota’s commitment to the environment is succeeding. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Toyota 2050 plans to cut CO2 from its new cars by 90 percent

University of Cambridge study finds 87% of Android devices are insecure

The study’s estimate of the proportion of known “insecure,” “maybe secure” and “secure” devices over time. (credit: androidvulnerabilities.org ) It’s easy to see that the Android ecosystem currently has a rather lax policy toward security, but a recent study from the University of Cambridge put some hard numbers to Android’s security failings. The conclusion finds that “on average 87.7% of Android devices are exposed to at least one of 11 known critical vulnerabilities.” Data for the study was collected through the group’s ” Device Analyzer ” app, which has been available for free on the Play Store since May 2011. After the participants opted into the survey, the University says it collected daily Android version and build number information from over 20,400 devices. The study then compared this version information against 13 critical vulnerabilities (including the Stagefright vulnerabilities ) dating back to 2010. Each individual device was then labeled “secure” or “insecure” based on whether or not its OS version was patched against these vulnerabilities, or placed in a special “maybe secure” category if it could have gotten a specialized, backported fix. As for why so many Android devices are insecure, the study found that most of the blame sits with OEMs. The group states that “the bottleneck for the delivery of updates in the Android ecosystem rests with the manufacturers, who fail to provide updates to fix critical vulnerabilities.” Along with the study, the University of Cambridge is launching ” AndroidVulnerabilities.org ,” a site that houses this data and grades OEMs based on their security record. The group came up with a 1-10 security rating for OEMs that it calls the “FUM” score. This algorithm takes into account the number of days a proportion of running devices has no known vulnerabilities ( F ree), the proportion of devices that run the latest version of Android ( U pdate), and the mean number of vulnerabilities not fixed on any device the company sells ( M ean). The study found that Google’s Nexus devices were the most secure out there, with a FUM score of 5.2 out of 10. Surprisingly, LG was next with 4.0, followed by Motorola, Samsung, Sony, and HTC, respectively. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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University of Cambridge study finds 87% of Android devices are insecure

Webflow’s “first visual CMS” is like WordPress mixed with Photoshop

A demo video showing off Webflow CMS. Web design tools like Webflow have done a lot to thin the line between designers and developers. Now, however, the birthed-by-Y-Combinator startup wants to take it further with what it describes as the world’s first visual content management system (CMS). There’s not much to it right now. In a nutshell, Webflow CMS is a barebones WordPress installation jammed into a Photoshop-like interface. The idea here is to provide a way to create “completely custom websites powered by dynamic content” without any knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP, or databases. And to an extent, it works. The Webflow CMS allows users to create or use pre-existing “Collections”—templates for dynamic content types. From there, you can then determine the kind of fields associated with the Collection, such as whether they’re mandatory to be completed, if they’re to be linked to another Collection, and what kind of minimum word counts are to be expected. These criteria are universal for any instance of the Collection. All Blog Posts, for example, will draw from the parent Blog Posts Collection. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Webflow’s “first visual CMS” is like WordPress mixed with Photoshop

Sprint offers $2.1 billion to acquire the rest of Clearwire

As most observers expected , Sprint has finally made a formal offer to acquire the rest of Clearwire. On Thursday, Sprint said it would pay $2.1 billion for the remaining 49.7 percent of Clearwire that it does not currently control. As we reported yesterday , the move is widely seen as a play for Sprint to acquire Clearwire’s valuable 2.5 GHz spectrum, which it would use to offer LTE and strengthen its position against Verizon and AT&T. The bid works out to $2.90 per share—higher than the company’s closing price on Wednesday—but analysts say the offer may not be good enough. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Qualcomm quarterly profits plummet 47 percent year-over-year

Qualcomm, the world’s largest supplier of chips for mobile phones, is reeling after announcing a 47 percent drop in quarterly profit compared to the same period in 2014. On Wednesday, the San Diego-based firm said that it made $1.2 billion in net income during the third fiscal quarter of 2015, down from $2.2 billion a year ago. As a way to bounce back, the company also announced that it would be cutting 15 percent of its workforce, and would “significantly reduce [our] temporary workforce.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Qualcomm quarterly profits plummet 47 percent year-over-year