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HTC hasn't made a tablet since 2011 or a Nexus device since 2010, but pretty soon both lacunas will be brought to an end by the launch of a new device: the Nexus 9. Rumored over the summer and confirmed by The Wall Street Journal's sources today, the Nexus 9 tablet will mark a revival of the Google-HTC partnership that produced the original Nexus One device. The Journal says that HTC engineers have been flying back and forth between Mountain View and their Taiwanese base as the two companies collaborate on the development of the new 9-inch device.

Earlier this month, a patent lawsuit filed by Nvidia against Qualcomm and Samsung mentioned that "the HTC Nexus 9, expected in the third quarter of 2014, is also expected to use the Tegra K1."...

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As I travel the world and speak to people from all professions and walks of life about the copyright monopoly, “the letter” is still the story that causes the most pennies to drop about why the copyright monopoly must be reduced. It’s by far the angle that makes the message come across to the most people.

“How will the artists make money” is basically just a distraction from the real and important issues at hand, and this story helps bring them there.

The story of “the letter” deals with just how big and vital civil liberties have been sacrificed in the transition from analog to digital at the tenacious insistence of the copyright industry for the sake of their bottom line. The analog letter was the message sent the way our parents sent them: written onto a physical piece of paper, put into an envelope, postaged with an old-fashioned stamp and put into a mailbox for physical delivery to the intended recipient.

That letter had four important characteristics that each embodied vital civil liberties.

That letter, first of all, was anonymous. Everybody had the right to send an anonymous message to somebody. You could identify yourself on the inside of the message, for only the recipient to know, on the envelope, for the postal services to know, or not at all. Or you could write a totally bogus name, organization, and address as the sender of your message, and that was okay, too. Not just okay, it was even fairly common.

Second, it was secret in transit. When we talk of letters being opened and inspected routinely, the thoughts go to scenes of the East German Stasi – the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, the East German National Security Agency (yes, that’s how Stasi’s name translates). Letters being opened and inspected? Seriously? You had to be the primary suspect of an extremely grave crime for that to take place.

Third, the mailman was never ever held responsible for the contents of the letters being carried. The thought was ridiculous. They were not allowed to look at the messages in the first place, so it was unthinkable that they’d be held accountable for what they dutifully delivered.

Fourth, the letter was untracked. Nobody had the means – nor indeed the capability – to map who was communicating with whom.

All of these characteristics, which all embed vital civil liberties, have been lost in the transition to digital at the insistence of the copyright industry – so that they, as a third-party, can prevent people from sending letters with a content they just don’t like to see sent, for business reasons of theirs.

The question of “how will somebody make money” is entirely irrelevant. The job of any entrepreneur is to make money given the current constraints of society and technology.

No industry gets to dismantle civil liberties with the poor excuse that they can’t make money otherwise. They have the simple choice of doing something else or go out of business. And yet, that’s exactly what we have allowed the copyright industry to do: dismantle vital civil liberties. Dismantle the very concept of the private letter. And they’re continuing to do so under pretty but deceptive words.

When I explain the situation like this, the penny drops for an astounding amount of people and they stop asking the learned, but silly, question about how somebody is to get paid if we have the rights we’ve always had – to send anything to anybody anonymously.

That’s the Analog Equivalent Right. To be able send anything to anybody anonymously. And that’s what we need to bring to the digital environment, even if an obsolete industry doesn’t like it because it may or may not hurt the bottom line. That’s completely irrelevant.

Try telling this story and watch the penny drop, almost every single time. It’s remarkable.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

19 Caves That Are Almost Too Beautiful To Be Real

This year the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has built a reputation for being one of the most prolific and aggressive anti-piracy groups operating today.

PIPCU, as its more commonly known, has been involved in the closure of dozens of domains, the closure of several sites, and the arrests of individuals up and down the country.

Until now PIPCU’s most visible partners, at least in terms of enforcement in the Internet space, have been the Federation Against Copyright Theft (movies and TV) and the BPI (music). However, there are now signs that sites offering pirated ebooks are part of PIPCU’s strategy.

Like many movie, music, sports and proxy fans have in recent months, this week visitors to the ebook site OnRead.com were confronted with the ominous PIPCU “seized” notice.

“You have tried to access a website that is under criminal investigation by the UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU). This site is being investigated for online copyright infringement,” the page reads.

The signs suggest that OnRead knew something was coming. After regular and often daily tweets of new literature appearing on the site, on September 2 the account fell silent.

TorrentFreak asked City of London Police for specifics on the site’s closure, including whether the domain seizure and shutdown had been carried out together with The Publishers Association, a known PIPCU partner.

“As part of Operation Creative PIPCU is working closely with the Publishers Association, as well as FACT, IFPI and BPI to disrupt copyright infringing websites. Since the launch of the operation several illegal film, music and publishing sites have been suspended,” a PIPCU spokesperson said.

While it seems more than likely that OnRead was operating without licenses recognized by UK publishers, an archive of the domain reveals that the site’s operators tried to claim that in at least one jurisdiction the site had operated legally.

“All materials presented on this site are available for the distribution over the Internet in accordance with the license of the Russian Organization for multimedia and Digital Systems (ROMS) and intended for personal use only. Further distribution, resale or broadcasting is strictly prohibited,” the recent archive reads.

ROMS was a Russian collective rights management organization that attracted public attention in 2006 when notorious music download site, AllofMP3, insisted it operated legally under ROMS’ remit to collect and distribute statutory royalty payments as allowed under Russian law. In 2007, AllofMP3 closed down for good.

While the legal claims made by OnRead are fuzzy and by now years out of date, additional notes do warn users that they have “no right to download any files from the site if this violates the law of his country.”

It’s clear that PIPCU and quite probably The Publishers Association felt that OnRead was not in compliance with UK law. As a result the site’s domain, registered with InternetBS, is now in police hands.

In 2007, ZML.com, a site that offered movies to US customers, also tried to claim ROMS protection. That domain is now under the control of ICE and Homeland Security after being seized in the very first wave of Operation in Our Sites.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

 What’s happening with digital receipts? The answer to that is – a lot. The last five years or so have seen an explosion of ideas surrounding the capture, management and storage of digital receipts. There has been a mad rush by start-ups and merchants trying to capitalise on the enthusiasm typically generated by a new and innovative concept and it seems, in the process, they have… Read More

 Is there anything a robotic system for the extrusion of plastic in to solid forms over time can’t do? We present to you today the Pi-Top, a Raspberry Pi-based laptop that is completely 3D-printed and lasts hours on a single charge. The kit, which will launch as a Kickstarter soon, offers a 13.3-inch screen and a little keyboard and trackpad combo for data entry. Viola! A little open… Read More

Yesterday the Digital Citizens Alliance released a new report that looks into the business models of “shadowy” file-storage sites.

Titled “Behind The Cyberlocker Door: A Report How Shadowy Cyberlockers Use Credit Card Companies to Make Millions,” the report attempts to detail the activities of some of the world’s most-visited hosting sites.

While it’s certainly an interesting read, the NetNames study provides a few surprises, not least the decision to include New Zealand-based cloud storage site Mega.co.nz. There can be no doubt that there are domains of dubious standing detailed in the report, but the inclusion of Mega stands out as especially odd.

Mega was without doubt the most-scrutinized file-hosting startup in history and as a result has had to comply fully with every detail of the law. And, unlike some of the other sites listed in the report, Mega isn’t hiding away behind shell companies and other obfuscation methods. It also complies fully with all takedown requests, to the point that it even took down its founder’s music, albeit following an erroneous request.

With these thoughts in mind, TorrentFreak alerted Mega to the report and asked how its inclusion amid the terminology used has been received at the company.

Grossly untrue and highly defamatory

“We consider the report grossly untrue and highly defamatory of Mega,” says Mega CEO Graham Gaylard.

“Mega is a privacy company that provides end-to-end encrypted cloud storage controlled by the customer. Mega totally refutes that it is a cyberlocker business as that term is defined and discussed in the report prepared by NetNames for the Digital Citizens Alliance.”

Gaylard also strongly refutes the implication in the report that as a “cyberlocker”, Mega is engaged in activities often associated with such sites.

“Mega is not a haven for piracy, does not distribute malware, and definitely does not engage in illegal activities,” Gaylard says. “Mega is running a legitimate business alongside other cloud storage providers in a highly competitive market.”

The Mega CEO told us that one of the perplexing things about the report is that none of the criteria set out by the report for “shadowy” sites is satisfied by Mega, yet the decision was still taken to include it.

Infringing content and best practices

One of the key issues is, of course, the existence of infringing content. All user-uploaded sites suffer from that problem, from YouTube to Facebook to Mega and thousands of sites in between. But, as Gaylard points out, it’s the way those sites handle the issue that counts.

“We are vigorous in complying with best practice legal take-down policies and do so very quickly. The reality though is that we receive a very low number of take-down requests because our aim is to have people use our services for privacy and security, not for sharing infringing content,” he explains.

“Mega acts very quickly to process any take-down requests in accordance with its Terms of Service and consistent with the requirements of the USA Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) process, the European Union Directive 2000/31/EC and New Zealand’s Copyright Act process. Mega operates with a very low rate of take-down requests; less than 0.1% of all files Mega stores.”

Affiliate schemes that encourage piracy

One of the other “rogue site” characteristics as outlined in the report is the existence of affiliate schemes designed to incentivize the uploading and sharing of infringing content. In respect of Mega, Gaylard rejects that assertion entirely.

“Mega’s affiliate program does not reward uploaders. There is no revenue sharing or credit for downloads or Pro purchases made by downloaders. The affiliate code cannot be embedded in a download link. It is designed to reward genuine referrers and the developers of apps who make our cloud storage platform more attractive,” he notes.

The PayPal factor

As detailed in many earlier reports (1,2,3), over the past few years PayPal has worked hard to seriously cut down on the business it conducts with companies in the file-sharing space.

Companies, Mega included, now have to obtain pre-approval from the payment processor in order to use its services. The suggestion in the report is that large “shadowy” sites aren’t able to use PayPal due to its strict acceptance criteria. Mega, however, has a good relationship with PayPal.

“Mega has been accepted by PayPal because we were able to show that we are a legitimate cloud storage site. Mega has a productive and respected relationship with PayPal, demonstrating the validity of Mega’s business,” Gaylard says.

Public apology and retraction – or else

Gaylard says that these are just some of the points that Mega finds unacceptable in the report. The CEO adds that at no point was the company contacted by NetNames or Digital Citizens Alliance for its input.

“It is unacceptable and disappointing that supposedly reputable organizations such as Digital Citizens and NetNames should see fit to attack Mega when it provides the user end to end encryption, security and privacy. They should be promoting efforts to make the Internet a safer and more trusted place. Protecting people’s privacy. That is Mega’s mission,” Gaylard says.

“We are requesting that Digital Citizens Alliance withdraw Mega from that report entirely and issue a public apology. If they do not then we will take further action,” he concludes.

TorrentFreak asked NetNames to comment on Mega’s displeasure and asked the company if it stands by its assertion that Mega is a “shadowy” cyberlocker. We received a response (although not directly to our questions) from David Price, NetNames’ head of piracy analysis.

“The NetNames report into cyberlocker operation is based on information taken from the websites of the thirty cyberlockers used for the research and our own investigation of this area, based on more than a decade of experience producing respected analysis exploring digital piracy and online distribution,” Price said.

That doesn’t sound like a retraction or an apology, so this developing dispute may have a way to go.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Android: While the styles have gotten closer together lately, Android and iOS are pretty distinct. This design bridges the gap, utilizing the frosted, layered themes of iOS, combined with Android's new material approach for a unique look.

This design is a theme for custom launcher Themer. To get this look on your device, download it from the source below and follow these instructions:

1. Move the .zip to sdcard0 > MyColorScreen > Themer > Exported > zip (Your initial location may vary.)
2. Open Themer and browse for themes.
3. Under "My Themes" select "Exported."
4. Choose "Blurred L.zip"

Do you have an awesome, tweaked-into-oblivion home or lock screen of your own that you'd like to share? Post it in the comments below, or on your own Kinja blog with the tag "home screen showcase" (no quotes). Be sure to include a description of how you made it so we can feature it as the next featured home screen.

Blurred L | My Color Screen

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Less than a day after Apple detailed new efforts in user privacy for its products, Google now says it plans to encrypt user data on all Android devices. Speaking to The Washington Post, Google says data encryption will now be a part of the activation process instead of an optional feature. The end result is that whatever data is stored on that device, be it a phone or tablet, will be inaccessible unless the person has the correct password.

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If you're a member of the "no iron" club, there are plenty of methods to keep wrinkle free. This trick speeds up the classic spray bottle technique.

We've talked about de-wrinkling clothes without an iron, but YouTuber Piotr Wilczek takes it to the next level. Wilczek's method involves a spray water, but speeds up the drying process a bit by attaching his shirt to an upward facing fan. Just hang your shirt, spray it with the water bottle, and clip it to your fan. Just like that you'll have a fluffy, wrinkle-free shirt.

How to remove wrinkles from clothes using fan | YouTube

Google Now is only as good as the cards it tosses up for users to play around with. Since launch, TV cards and the ability to customize them has been a luxury exclusively available to people in the US. Now it looks like the feature is trickling out to residents of the UK as well.

A couple of readers on that side of the Atlantic Ocean sent us these screenshots of the feature in action.

Google Now TV Cards And Their Customization Options Appear To Have Launched For Users In The UK was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Depression is a very real problem, not just for adults but for children as well. Psych Central points out one thing parents and teachers could do that might help prevent children from suffering from depression: teach a specific type of problem solving and thinking skill.

Researchers trained a group of 69 fifth- and sixth-graders for three months in skills like replacing negative beliefs with positive ones and viewing setbacks as temporary, specific to a time and place (e.g., a bad grade on one test doesn't mean he or she will never be good at math). Those who received the training, a kind of preventative form of cognitive behavioral therapy, were less likey to have moderate to severe symptoms of depression than the 49 children who didn't get the treatment, even two years after the study.

It's important to note, as Psych Central does, that depression is a complex disease, with biological, environmental, and personal factors. No one's saying we can completely prevent depression by telling people to just think postitively. However, these are still good skills to teach children—how to reframe negative beliefs so they're more realistic and how to see failures as temporary rather than personal defects. Sharing the frustrations you've overcome can also help them develop grit.

Sadly, Psych Central reports that nearly one in 10 children experience a major depressive episode by the time they're 14 years old, and almost one in five will experience it before graduating from high school. Everything we could do to recognize the symptoms and prevent depression, if possible, in the first place is worth learning.

Read more specific advice in the link below.

Helping Children Avoid Depression | Psych Central

Photo by Denkrahm.

 Researchers at SUNY Buffalo have found that habitual Facebook users — those who are on the site more frequently than their peers — were more susceptible to phishing scams. How did they figure this out? By asking them about their habits and then surreptitiously creating a fake friend who then asked them for private information, including their student ID number and date of birth. Read More

 PayPal Here, the company’s dongle-based mobile payments solution, is now available for Android tablets, the company announced this afternoon — a move that will address a large and growing swath of the tablet market. According to Gartner, PayPal notes, 62 percent of tablets sold last year run Android. The PayPal Here application allows users to accept credit card and debit card… Read More

Under the Patriot Act, the US government can demand information from companies and ask them to keep the order secret, but there's a clever legal feint that can sidestep this: a so-called "warrant canary." Now it appears Apple may have sent up the signal.

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Yes, the Kindle Voyage is unquestionably the star of tonight's announcements from Amazon. But here's another thing that millions of people will likely be buying come October: a $79 Kindle with a touchscreen, faster performance, and more memory. (If you're wondering, that price is indeed "with offers.") Amazon's entry-level e-reader is seeing some nice upgrades this year, with an all-touch interface serving as the most obvious change. The company is officially bidding farewell to physical controls on Kindle. Sorry button fans; you can press those side bezels all you want, but nothing will happen. If you've ever picked up a Kindle Paperwhite, you already know how this works. Amazon's touch navigation hasn't led to many complaints for that...

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Amazon just announced a huge revamp to its Kindle lineup: the company's flagship Kindle Fire HDX is faster and has better sound, but keeps last year's design and price point. There's also a pair of entry-level tablets that start at $99 and $139, respectively, that could set a new standard for the price point.

Amazon is also continuing to focus on kids with a new pair of cheap, child-friendly tablets, and the entry-level Kindle e-reader finally has a touchscreen. And lastly is the Kindle Voyage, the biggest change to Amazon's e-reader lineup since the Paperwhite. All of our first impressions and hands-on videos can be found right here.

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Amazon just removed one of the biggest roadblocks for sharing things you've bought with someone else in your family — at least for some of the things you buy off Amazon. Alongside its new line of Kindle announcements, it's introducing a new feature called Family Library that lets people in the same household share books, audiobooks, Prime Instant videos, and any apps or games that were bought off Amazon's Appstore. Not included on that list are things like purchased music, movies, or TV shows.

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The latest member of Samsung's successful Note phablet family is nearly ready to make its retail debut. Samsung has this morning announced UK availability of the Galaxy Note 4 for October 10th, with pre-orders opening up at Samsung Experience Stores from tomorrow. The Note 4 was already a highlight device for Samsung, combining its latest and best technological advancements, but now that the iPhone 6 Plus has arrived, it stands as the most direct challenger to Apple's incoming device. The ongoing clash between Apple and Samsung that got its start in smartphones is now moving to this larger size class and it'll be fascinating to see how it develops once the Note 4 and its upgraded S Pen are on the market to do battle with the 6 Plus.

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Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp., just sent a monumentally cynical letter to the EU attacking Google, matching the letter from a posse of European publishers led by Germany’s Axel Springer and another public letter from that company’s head, Mathia Döpfner. These supposed bastions of conservative thinking are running to the government they all disdain to try to get unfair advantage on Google because — simply put — they have failed in the marketplace on their own. The internet and defeated them. They are crying uncle. On Newsgenius, I annotated Thomson’s letter….

Following on the Amazon division's July announcement that publishers could sell their work without DRM on its platform, a huge collection of publishers have signed up to participate: IDW Publishing, Valiant Entertainment, Oni Press, Fantagraphics Books, Aspen Comics, Action Lab Entertainment, Th3rd World Studios, A Wave Blue World, Blind Ferret Entertainment, Caliber Comics, Creative Impulse Entertainment, Devil’s Due Entertainment, GT Labs Comics and Kingstone Media. Read the rest

The imprisonment of former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde has been going on since late May 2014, provoking a number of reports on the conditions under which he is being held.

Despite being accused of non-violent crimes, Peter is being held in a high-security unit and without concern for his dietary needs. As a result he’s literally wasting away.

Following the tragic death of his father who recently succumbed to a long-standing set of illnesses, the week delivered yet more bad news. Although the prison would allow him to attend the funeral, Peter was told he could expect to carry his father’s coffin wearing handcuffs.

Understandably the news provoked much outrage. Why would a non-violent and now-frail man with with just a few days left on his sentence try to escape from not one but two prison guards? As that improbable situation was discussed among supporters online, a much less traditional support group were asking the same questions.

Hollywood director Lexi Alexander has been a vocal supporter of Peter and earlier this year broke with the usual Tinseltown position by calling for his release.

While her outspoken approach is uncharacteristic of a Hollywood worker, it may come as a surprise that she is definitely not on her own. During recent weeks the director and actress, who has several movies under her belt, called for other like-minded individuals in Hollywood to make themselves known.

The result was the publication a few minutes ago of a video dedicated to the uncuffing, release and support of Peter Sunde.

“We created this video in solidarity with Peter as he attends his father’s funeral today,” Alexander told TorrentFreak.

“Originally I had planned to do this over the next few weeks, but when I heard about Peter’s father’s death yesterday, we scrambled and got it together within a few hours.”

While a few of the people in the video have understandably chosen to remain anonymous, others have been very happy to show their faces. With the famous Hollywood sign in the background, first up, Julie Bush.

“Julie Bush was pro-piracy before I even knew what file-sharing meant,” Alexander told TF. “She used to be a writer on the show Sons of Anarchy and now she’s writing a major property for Universal Studios: Robert Ludlum’s The Sigma Protocol.”

Bush has written on a number of occasions about Hollywood’s “dumb” approach to piracy.

“Many showrunners and executives I know not only pirate stuff all the time but also privately endorse the idea that piracy is good for the industry, a great way to advertise, and essential to building a healthy audience,” she explained last year.

The gentleman holding up the sign calling for the un-cuffing of Peter is actor Ross McCall. He appeared in Band of Brothers, Alexander’s movies Green Street and Green Street 2, before moving on to star in TV series including Crash, White Collar and Luther.

“The pretty blonde [0m 53s] is producer Catrin Cooper. Very outspoken about her opposition to criminalizing file-sharing,” Alexander continues. Cooper has worked in several roles on movies including Casino Royale, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Batman Begins.

“The guy with ‘Free Peter Sunde’ on his shirt is a writer and actor named Edward DeRuiter, one of his movies was just released last month,” Alexander adds.

“Then there’s Brent Weichsel, who against my advice decided to put his name and union on the sign. He’s Local 600 Camera Assistant.”

It’s quite something and particularly brave for these individuals to put their name to the support of someone described by studio bosses as someone intent on the ruination of the industry. That said, and as clearly pointed out on one of the signs held up in the video, Hollywood workers are not only writers and directors, they’re also humans too.

The video, which features writers and authors, directors, producers, a screenwriter, a cinematographer, an engineer and a dialect coach, is embedded below and available on Lexi’s blog.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

You know the pain of watching a vertical video in a world based on horizontal players. Google took a swing at fixing that with the Google Camera app, which warns users not to do that. Horizon actually fixes the issue by letting you take a proper horizontal video while holding the phone in any orientation. It's magic!

Horizon uses your phone's accelerometer to detect the tilt and adjusts the video frame in real time.

Horizon Wages War On Vertical Videos With A Little Help From Your Accelerometer was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

"What would it take to modify the Windows Start menu on every Windows user machine in less than a week?" That’s the question Microsoft is asking itself as it pushes to speed up Windows releases to compete with rivals like Chrome OS, Android, and iOS. In a new job listing, the company is looking for a developer to join the "Windows Mission Control" team to modernize how the operating system is released and delivered to customers.

A fundamental change to the way Windows is updated is on the way

"We are creating a new system that will fundamentally change the way Windows is shipping to put the ecosystem at the center of Windows," reads the job listing. That new system has been in development for some time at Microsoft, with changes on the...

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