Maximum PC - News

Brazil Files Lawsuit Against Twitter, Says DUI Checkpoint Accounts Must Go

Ryan Whitwam — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:15:41 +0000

Twitter is i hot legal water with the government of Brazil today, which has filed a lawsuit against the micro-blogging company. At issue are a number of Twitter accounts that Brazilian authorities say are being used to warn drivers of police traffic controls. The fines are set to start rolling in if Twitter does not close these accounts.

Brazil has been working to reduce rates of driving under the influence in a nation with a reputation for lax traffic laws. Twitter is hugely popular in Brazil, and that has led some individuals to create accounts that tweet the location of police checkpoints and radar traps. The Brazilian government says the accounts are not only illegal under the law, but ethically dubious.

Increased police checkpoints are designed to save lives, they say. That some of these pages have begun mixing in general traffic information with the checkpoint locations has not impressed the Brazilian courts. The lawsuit asks for Twitter to be fined nearly $300,000 per-day that the accounts stay up. If the company loses the case, it might have no choice but to give its new region-specific filtering tool a spin.

Woman Ordered to Decrypt Laptop Claims She "Forgot" Key

Ryan Whitwam — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:56:30 +0000

After being ordered to provide the decryption code for her laptop last month, a Colorado is claiming that she no-longer remembers the key. The laptop belonging to Ramona Fricosu was seized as part of a mortgage fraud case in 2010. The government has spent the last few years working to force her to decrypt the hard drive, claiming that doing so would not violate her 5th Amendment right not to incriminate herself.

“It’s very possible to forget passwords,” said Philip Dubois, attorney to Fricosu. “It’s not clear to me she was the one who set up the encryption on this drive. I don’t know if she will be able to decrypt it.” This case has been a complicated one, as the Supreme Court has never ruled on the status of digital encryption as it pertains to the 5th Amendment. Fricosu has until the end of the month to comply with the ruling, at which time she will be found in contempt if she does not.

This leaves the judge in a tough spot. Fricosu would likely be jailed for failing to comply, but there’s no definitive way to prove she still knows the encryption key. Lawyers suspect she will be jailed in an effort to force her to cave. The judge will have to decide how long to hold her, as the court cannot jail her indefinitely without proof she is withholding the key. Do you think courts should be able to force people to provide an encryption key?

Confessions of an Elite Pirate

Ryan Whitwam — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:37:23 +0000

The BitTorrent community used to think that law enforcement had better things to do than hunt them down, but that all changed in mid-2005, when US-based EliteTorrents was raided by the FBI and ICE. The site had over 130,000 users, and was run by a small number of dedicated staff, including one 19 year-old who recently spoke about the ordeal. He gives a peek inside the first big Torrent bust of what has become an ongoing war on piracy for US law enforcement.

StonyVision, as he was known online, got into the file-sharing scene around the age of 15. In early 2004, StonyVision’s massive upload bandwidth got the attention of the still-embryonic EliteTorrents. He joined the staff and began renting servers to push out hundreds of megabits per-second over BitTorrent. StonyVision eventually tired of EliteTorrents, and made his exit in April of 2005, but it was too late to escape the coming FBI dragnet.

May 25th 2005 was the day the FBI and ICE went after EliteTorrents. After shutting down the site, agents arrived at the homes of the EliteTorrent staff, StonyVision included. The 19 year-old lawyered up and started fighting back. The prosecutor had ample evidence, and was seeking a prison sentence as high as 5 years. StonyVision is the first to admit he was lucky to get a sympathetic judge, and was able to avoid jail time. He payed a $3500 fine, served 6-months house arrest, and 3-years of probation in which he was unable to touch a computer.

StonyVision has only recently been able to get back online with his own computer, and reports he was inspired by the anti-SOPA movement last month. His two felony convictions for sharing files has made job applications a little tricky, but he says his self-destructive streak is no more.

Google Starts Laying Fiber In Kansas Cities

Brad Chacos — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:31:08 +0000

Google's plans to bring a face-meltingly fast 1Gbps Internet connection to Kansas Cities (in both Missouri and Kansas) took a big step towards becoming reality today. After haggling with city officials about wire placement on utility poles, a deal was finally struck, and the company is ready to get down to brass tacks and start actually laying fiber.

"As we build out Google Fiber, we’ll be taking thousands of miles of cables and stretching them across Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri," general manager Kevin Lo announced on the Google Fiber blog. "At first, we’ll focus on building this solid fiber backbone. Then, as soon as we have an infrastructure that is up and running, we’ll be able to connect Google Fiber into homes across Kansas City!"

There's no word on which neighborhoods or areas will be getting first dibs at the fiber, though. Google hopes to start delivering actual 1Gbps service to KC customers by the end of the first quarter, according to the project's FAQ page. Since they're only starting to lay fiber now, don't be surprised if the roll out slips back a bit.

Nvidia's Full Kepler Lineup Leaked to the Web

Paul Lilly — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:21:39 +0000

Anticipation for Nvidia's upcoming Kepler launch is running high these days. Rumors and early reports suggest Kepler's going to be king of the GPU castle when it's released, promptly stealing back the performance crown that sits atop AMD's Radeon HD 7970, but details have mostly been sparse. That is, until now. A full lineup of Kepler graphics cards has been leaked to the Web, complete with specs, release dates, prices, and more.

Here's part of the full monty, according to EXPreview Lenzfire (original source):

GTX 690: 2x1.75GB, 2x6.4 billion transistors, $999, Q3 2012
GTX 680: 2GB, 6.4 billion transistors, $649, April
GTX 670: 1.75GB, 6.4 billion transistors, $499, April
GTX 660 Ti: 1.5GB, 6.4 billion transistors, $399, Q2/Q3 2012
GTX 660: 2GB, 3.4 billion transistors, $319, April
GTX 650 Ti: 1.75GB, 3.4 billion transistors, $249, Q2/Q3 2012
GTX 650: 1.5GB, 1.8 billion transistors, $179, May
GTX 640: 2GB, 1.8 billion transistors, $139, May

EXPreview Lenzfire posted plenty of other details about each GPU, but what's really interesting is how Kepler's performance supposedly scales. According to EXPreview's charts, the GTX 680 and 670 will outpace AMD Radeon's HD 7970 by around 45 percent and 20 percent, respectively, and GTX 670 will run around 20 percent faster than the 7950.

Based on the leaked info, you can expect the GTX 660 to offer roughly the same performance as a current generation GTX 580, and the GTX 650 Ti as a GTX 570, GTX 650 as a GTX 560, and the GTX 640 as a GTX 550 Ti.

Avast Misidentifies Steam As A Trojan

Brad Chacos — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:48:10 +0000

Are you having troubles getting Steam to boot up today? If so, the problem might not be with Valve's blockbuster gaming service; the issue could be your antivirus, instead. This weekend, the freebie Avast! antivirus misidentified a Steam component as a nasty little Trojan and sent the executable to the time-out box known as Quarantine as a result. The problem: SteamService.exe was a totally clean file, and Steam won't run without it.

Fortunately, the muck-up only lasted about an hour and a half, according to The Register. Avast! yanked the bonked definition around 90 minutes after it went live. While the goof shouldn't have happened in the first place, kudos to Avast! for fixing so quickly, and on the weekend to boot.

If you were affected, restoring the file from Quarantine might get Steam up and running again. However, several Steam users needed to reinstall the service, resubmit their verification code and reboot their PC to get Steam working normally again, and many warn that installing SteamService.exe again can be a lengthy process.

Where you affected by Avast's false positive? How easy was it for you to get Steam up and running again?

Thermaltake Expands Toughpower and Smart Series Power Supply Lines

Paul Lilly — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:40:02 +0000

Depending on how you look at things, the power supply is arguably the most important component in a build, and is at least one of the most underrated. Thermaltake over the years has worked hard to be known as one of a handful of reliable PSU brands, and its Toughpower and Smart Series are generally well received around the Web. Today both of those lines are expanding with new wattage options.

Thermaltake is fleshing out its Toughpower series with 550W, 650W, and 750W models, each of which is 80 Plus Gold certified with 87-92 percent efficiency at 20-100 percent load under real world load conditions. In addition to 80 Plus Gold certification, these Toughpower units live up to their name with massive single +12V rails delivering 50A on the 550W and 750W models, and 60W on the 850W model, and by using 100 percent Japanese capacitors.

Rounding out the Smart Series are 750W and 850W models. These are 80 Plus Bronze certified to deliver 82-88 percent efficiency at 20-100 percent load under real world load conditions. Single +12V rails are also a staple of Thermaltake's Smart units, with 62A available on the 750W and 70W on the 850W. They use flat modular cables and are similar to previous Smart models, except the 750W and 850W adopt 100 percent Japanese capacitors like the Toughpower line.

No word on price or availability.

Netflix Dives Into Content Creation, Launches "Lilyhammer" Original Series

Brad Chacos — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:11:48 +0000

Hangover Monday has turned out to be a pretty momentous day for fans of digital television watching. But while pirates bemoan the death of BTJunkie.org and Redbox gears up for a new streaming service venture with Verizon, Netflix is entering a new phase of its own: content creator. Today, the company launched Lilyhammer, a mob drama starring Steven Van Zandt of Sopranos and Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band fame. It looks like Netflix knows where its binge-watching strengths lie, too; all 8 episodes are available for immediate viewing.

As if Van Zandt didn't sound multitalented enough, he also wrote and produced the show, given him one hell of a rounded-out resume. The show is named after the city of Lilyhammer in Norway; after Van Zandt's character testifies against a New York mob boss, he is moved to the title town as part of the witness protection program.

If the show's reception in Norway is any indication, Lilyhammer might be worth checking out.

"Lilyhammer" is also showing on Norwegian television and (is in its) third week on the air," Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos wrote on the company's blog. "The show is a national sensation, with 1.2 million of the nation's 5 million people watching every week. It is the most watched TV show in Norwegian history."

Lilyhammer is just the first of many new original shows slated to hit the streaming giant. Netflix plans on running new episodes of the long-canceled cult hit Arrested Development as well as House of Cards, a political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and directed/produced by David Fincher, the mind behind Fight Club, Se7en and The Social Network.

So, does Netflix's original content intrigue you? If you're not a subscriber, does the addition of new programming make you more likely to start dropping $8/mo. for a streaming subscription?

Firefox 11 Beta Bounces into View with Chrome Migration

Paul Lilly — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:37:13 +0000

Mozilla's rapid release schedule for its Firefox browser means there's always a new version just around the corner. To wit, almost immediately after rolling out Firefox 10 to the masses, Mozilla has made available the first build of Firefox 11 on its Beta channel. Firefox 11 makes it easier than ever to switch from Chrome, and if that's what you want to do, Mozilla's latest build will happily migrate your bookmarks, history, and cookies over from Google's browser.

The other comparatively major feature addition to Firefox 11 is a new Sync option that will synchronize your add-ons across computers. Most of the other changes have to do with cleaning up the underlying code to offer better HTML5 support, CSS text-size adjustments, and a bunch of tweaks of interest to developers.

There are a handful of known issues in Firefox 11. Scrolling in the main GMail window will be slower than usual for some users, and a handful of Synaptic touchpads will be unable to vertically scroll, Mozilla says.

You can read more of what's new/unresolved in the release notes. Firefox 11 beta is available to download here.

Torrent Search Titan BTJunkie Calls It Quits

Paul Lilly — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:20:01 +0000

Robert De Niro's character in the movie Heat offered up some words of wisdom for those who operate in the criminal world. He said, "Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner." BTJunkie, one of the largest torrent search engines in the world, might not have been doing anything illegal, but with all that's been happening lately, the site's founder thought it best to take De Niro's words to heart and voluntarily shut down for good.

"This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we've decided to voluntarily shut down," a goodbye note on BTJunkie's website reads. "We've been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it's time to move on. It's been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!"

TorrentFreak said it spoke to BTJunkie's founder, who pointed towards the legal actions against sites such as MegaUpload and The Pirate Bay as motivating factors in his decision to shut down. The U.S. Department of Justice seized MegaUpload last month for allegedly breaking copyright law, while The Pirate Bay's founders recently were denied a request to appeal their prison sentences and multi-million dollar fines.

BTJunkie has not been targeted by federal authorities.