Hasta La Gadget!

Just last week, California created a law that would classify “revenge porn” as a criminal misdemeanor, and it looks like New York lawmakers also want to make a stand against this kind of thing. Unlike California though, New York is looking to include photos taken by the subject as being a part of their stand against revenge porn. (more…)

Revenge Porn Ban Being Considered By New York Lawmakers original content from Ubergizmo.

Yesterday, for a brief spell, ordinary Iranian citizens were able to talk to each other via Twitter and Facebook — services that had been officially banned since 2009. Today, however, they awoke to discover that the government had fully restored its anti-social blockade, with one communications official dismissing the whole episode as a “technical failure” stemming from some ISPs. That’s not necessarily true, however, and another possible explanation is that yesterday’s events were the result of a tussle between emerging pro-internet moderates like Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, and hard-liners elsewhere in the country’s power structure. Alternatively, some fear that the temporary lifting of the ban was a ploy to allow the authorities to trace would-be Facebook users. In any case, the communication official’s response to the glitch sounds ominous: “We will take action if there was a human flaw,” he’s quoted as saying. “We are probing it.”

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Source: USA Today

You know what they say? If you can’t beat ‘em, then join ‘em. I would suppose that government regulating some of society’s activities, such as gambling, alcohol and prostitution has something to do with keeping tabs and control over the situation. After all, if you were to outlaw something, chances are pretty high things could get ugly on the streets, so why not regulate the entire situation and make some money out of it at the same time? Some things, however, should not be regulated – such as texting while driving, as an outright ban would be, theoretically speaking, the correct thing to do. But is it effective? California’s texting-while-driving ban that took effect since the start of 2009 has not really resulted in the effect that lawmakers wanted, as cases of texting-while-driving has exploded since.

The AAA of California released its annual roadside observational surveys recently, finding out that handset-to-head cellphone use is down by 57% ever since the no-handsets-while-driving law took effect in 2008. Unfortunately, texting while driving is up by 126% since the 2009 ban, where approximately 4% of drivers admitted to doing it last year, against the 1.5% figure touted before the law kicked in. Perhaps the explosion of instant messaging platforms like WhatsApp has something to do with this unwanted growth. After all, enforcing such a ban can prove to be tricky and difficult to say the least.

Texting While Driving Gains Popularity After Being Outlawed original content from Ubergizmo.

Apple has been found to be in violation of a Samsung patent, which has resulted in a limited import ban on certain products, including the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, original iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G, all only for AT&T-specific models. More details are emerging about the ruling, but it’s likely this affects only older devices on AT&T because it relates to a specific component used before wider release of the iPhone with multi-band support.

The import ban could theoretically result in Apple being unable to sell the devices in question in the U.S., should all appeals fail and the decision be upheld, since Apple wouldn’t be able to bring the devices into the country from its overseas suppliers and manufacturing facilities. As this is an ITC ruling, it would have to be appealed to the White House or Federal Circuit to be overturned, notes Nilay Patel of The Verge on Twitter.

@panzer Not a preliminary ruling, like other ITC rulings. This is final, appealable only to WH (won't touch it) and Fed Circuit.—
nilay patel (@reckless) June 04, 2013

Even if it does result in an effective ban, these devices are likely nearing the end of their sales cycle, with updates looming in the fall or perhaps as soon as next week at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Still, it would be a considerable blow given that there are still a number of months between now and then, depending on when it takes effect. In the interim, small carriers and education still rely heavily on older models.

Apple announced today that it was, of course, disappointed with the outcome and will appeal today’s ruling telling AllThingsD, “Today’s decision has no impact on the availability of Apple products in the United States. Samsung is using a strategy which has been rejected by courts and regulators around the world. They’ve admitted that it’s against the interests of consumers in Europe and elsewhere, yet here in the United States Samsung continues to try to block the sale of Apple products by using patents they agreed to license to anyone for a reasonable fee.”

The full decision is embedded below, and the patent at issue in this particular decision is described in detail here. It’s related to cellular transmission of signals, to dramatically simplify things.

Woo, boy. You know those National Security Letters that the FBI has been issuing at its own discretion — the ones Google has been doing its best to track? Judge Susan Illston of Federal District Court in San Francisco just found ’em unconstitutional. As the story goes, NSLs arrive from the factory with a gag order on the recipient, and as Illston sees it, forbidding the recipient from “disclosing that they had received such an order.” So, she’s suggesting that the whole thing should be banned under the First Amendment.

Moreover, she’s ordering the US government to stop enforcing the gag provision in any lingering cases, though she reportedly “stayed her order for 90 days to give the government a chance to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.” Needless to say, the move comes as a blow to the existing administration’s surveillance practices, but something tells us this isn’t the last word we’ll be hearing on the matter. Hit up the links below for a look at the decision.

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Via: The New York Times

Source: Wired