Kristian's Internet Wanderings
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. (Philip K. Dick)
Dutch Newspaper De Volkskrant has published the story of how the Dutch Intelligence Services (AIVD) hacked the infamous Russian hacking group Cosybear / APT29 and monitored how they hacked into the US and how this was fought withe the Americans. Also on the aftermath of these findings being made public by the Trump Administration. Another country now deeply skeptical to sharing Intel with the US along the previous leaks made this year.
[Update] More info can be found at Nieuwsuur.
The letter written by Richard Jacobs to senior management in Uber (leading to his job demotion and eventually leaving Uber) that delayed the current court case between Waymo (Google) and Uber when discovered. This document has now been (mostly) made public by the court. The complete document can be found on Scripted, some initial analysis can be found on Engadet, CNN and on Verge.
This gives an uncensored and scary insight of how corporate espionage and hacking seems the be a key part of Ubers business model and operations.
Apple’s plans to enter the consumer media market have been know for long, and now more confirmed deals are public. The deal with Steven Spielberg on the resurrection of the Amazing Stories anthology has already been announced, now Apple has signed the right for 2 seasons of TV based on the Brian Stelter’s book ‘Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV “ and will star Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.
Disney has decided to terminate it’s 2012 streaming deal with Netflix and to launch their own service starting in 2019. You may remember that the 2012 deal was heralded as a major thing for Netflix with the inclusion of such valuable IP’s as Marvel and Pixar (and now of course the Star Wars universe).
This is a logical extension of the investments Disney has made in BAMTech (the US MLB Streaming company) and falls in line with the plans of launching a global streaming service for it’s sports service ESPN. For the Star Wars nuts: this means the next 2 films will be on Netflix, but not the last in the new trilogy.
Guilherme Rambo has in a tweet shown future Apple TV functionality hidden in the Apple HomePod firmware, showing support for 4K as well as Dolby Vision and HDR 10. He is till digging through the firmware, go to his tweet page to learn more.
Dan Rayburn (of Frost & Sulivan) has just written an interesting blog entry on Streaming Media about the impacts of Apple supporting H265 from High Sierra and the Google V9 codec market adaptation (and coming high end Codecs). He makes a theoretical calculation (heavily argued over in the comment section) on the costs for the Steamers of upgrading their front ends to handle the increased processing needs for these and future codecs. The suggested conclusion of a worst case cost increase of 50.0000% seems excessive (and is argued over) but as a user of x265 I can vouch for the impacts on the clients, my CPU loads are rarely under 90% across all cores when playing high end x265 files. It is a worthwhile thing to think about, in particular when 4K + resolutions are becoming more common. It is also worth contemplating that the cost will (one way or another) come back to the consumer. What we gain in less bandwidth we will most likely pay for in the cost of more processing from the streamers and providers.
Discovery Communications is merging with Scripps to create the worlds largest TV show network. An overview of the deal is conducted by Mac Insider, with details of the 14.6 Bil USD deal. This adds a number of interesting channels to the Discovery stable, highlights are : HGTV, Food Network, Travel Channel, DIY Network, Cooking Channel, Great American Country, Poland’s TVN, BBC joint venture UKTV, Asian Food Channel, and lifestyle channel Fine Living Network. Discovery Channel contributions include TLC, Investigation Discovery, Animal Planet, Science and Turbo/Velocity, OWN, Discovery Kids in Latin America, and Eurosport.
This opens up for more concerted mini or “skinny bundles” offerings, also directly to cable-cutters. The future looks even bleaker for the agregators out there.
