Miscellaneous Tech News
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OH MY GOD, JUST PAY THEM —
Google loses Sonos patent case, starts stripping functionality from speakersRather than pay royalty fees to Sonos, Google is sending downgrades to customers.
RON AMADEO - 1/7/2022, 11:43 AMFollowing a preliminary ruling in August, the US International Trade Commission has issued a final decision saying that Google infringed five Sonos smart speaker patents. It would be possible for this ruling to result in some products like the Nest Audio, Chromecast, and Pixel line being banned in the US, but Google has prepared ITC-approved software downgrades, which remove the infringing features from users' products.
Sonos essentially invented the connected speaker category for streaming music, but the advent of voice assistants has led to Big Tech stomping all over Sonos' territory. Sonos says that while it was pitching Google for support of Google Play Music, Google got a behind-the-scenes look at Sonos' operations in 2013. Sonos says Google used that access to "blatantly and knowingly" copy Sonos' features for the Google Home speaker, which launched in 2016. Sonos sued Google in early 2020.
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@gjacobse said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
OH MY GOD, JUST PAY THEM —
Google loses Sonos patent case, starts stripping functionality from speakersRather than pay royalty fees to Sonos, Google is sending downgrades to customers.
RON AMADEO - 1/7/2022, 11:43 AMFollowing a preliminary ruling in August, the US International Trade Commission has issued a final decision saying that Google infringed five Sonos smart speaker patents. It would be possible for this ruling to result in some products like the Nest Audio, Chromecast, and Pixel line being banned in the US, but Google has prepared ITC-approved software downgrades, which remove the infringing features from users' products.
Sonos essentially invented the connected speaker category for streaming music, but the advent of voice assistants has led to Big Tech stomping all over Sonos' territory. Sonos says that while it was pitching Google for support of Google Play Music, Google got a behind-the-scenes look at Sonos' operations in 2013. Sonos says Google used that access to "blatantly and knowingly" copy Sonos' features for the Google Home speaker, which launched in 2016. Sonos sued Google in early 2020.
I wonder if customers will now have a class action against Google because they bought the speakers with the expectation of those features. Now google should have to refund all of those people.
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Avira A/V mining crypto currency on PCs
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/01/500m-avira-antivirus-users-introduced-to-cryptomining/ -
@nadnerb said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Avira A/V mining crypto currency on PCs
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/01/500m-avira-antivirus-users-introduced-to-cryptomining/Haven’t we spent years clearing this crap off PCs?
I never used avira but a lot of people did/do. So all I have to say is:
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Boils down to the usual scam exploiting known unpatched Layer 8 flaws.
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HP to acquire Poly (Polycom / Plantronics)
https://press.hp.com/us/en/press-releases/2022/hp-inc-to-acquire-poly.html
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Curious to see how this ends.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/ubiquiti-sues-journalist-alleging-defamation-in-coverage-of-data-breach/ -
Rumour is (from someone in the pool) that 11% of Automox was laid off today. I guess I'm not surprised, COVID is a tough time to be growing a business and they aren't one that we hear about after their initial launch. Kind of lost the mindshare.
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That and every time they tell me about their product they talk about all the time I'd save... except it's all stuff already automated so no idea what time they are talking about. Seems like a solution seeking a problem.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
That and every time they tell me about their product they talk about all the time I'd save... except it's all stuff already automated so no idea what time they are talking about. Seems like a solution seeking a problem.
and I can't get their site to load this morning
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
That and every time they tell me about their product they talk about all the time I'd save... except it's all stuff already automated so no idea what time they are talking about. Seems like a solution seeking a problem.
and I can't get their site to load this morning
It's up here.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
That and every time they tell me about their product they talk about all the time I'd save... except it's all stuff already automated so no idea what time they are talking about. Seems like a solution seeking a problem.
and I can't get their site to load this morning
It's up here.
It is now also. It was definitely down when I posted - isitdownrightnow.com said so.
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@gjacobse said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Wow. Never heard of them, but that's sure a warning to be heeded.
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Anyone remember Fleetsmith? They were a sponsor of SpiceWorld a few years ago (back when conferences were still a thing.) They had a booth and were making an Apple-centric MDM.
They just went out of business. Another one bites the dust. It always seemed like a decent product, but the Apple-only MDM model felt unusable.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Anyone remember Fleetsmith?
They just went out of business.
Umm what? Apple bought them last year.
https://support.apple.com/guide/fleetsmith/welcome/web -
@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Anyone remember Fleetsmith?
They just went out of business.
Umm what? Apple bought them last year.
https://support.apple.com/guide/fleetsmith/welcome/webYes, and shut them down today. They were still operating like a separate company, though. But now they are gone.
Their announcement said "Apple made the decision...". But their FleetSmith service was operating (and I think maintained) as its own entity, just owned by Apple.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Anyone remember Fleetsmith?
They just went out of business.
Umm what? Apple bought them last year.
https://support.apple.com/guide/fleetsmith/welcome/webYes, and shut them down today. They were still operating like a separate company, though. But now they are gone.
Meh, don't care about a company staying separate year+ after acquisition. The product still exists though. Or was that cancelled as well?
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@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Anyone remember Fleetsmith?
They just went out of business.
Umm what? Apple bought them last year.
https://support.apple.com/guide/fleetsmith/welcome/webYes, and shut them down today. They were still operating like a separate company, though. But now they are gone.
Meh, don't care about a company staying separate year+ after acquisition. The product still exists though. Or was that cancelled as well?
Product is gone as of today. Or more or less. All paid accounts are put into "free" status. So they aren't screwing people. But the free accounts have a time limit. So it's kind of a temporary holding pattern just to give people time to move off to something else. But lots of the features are gone and the team behind is gone.
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