Apples gets sued over iPhone X Animoji infringement

Animojis for those who don’t remember are animated emojis that are created using the facial recognition features of the iPhone X and were widely talked about coming out of Apple’s September event. They were supposed to be a big deal for the company, however, it now looks like Apple will be fighting off a copyright infringement lawsuit to just keep the name.

3 year old feature

Reports are now coming out that Enrique Bonansea and his company emonster have had an app named Animoji listed on Apple’s app store since 2014 and have held the trademark since 2015. The app allows anyone to receive an iMessage with Animojis attached without the need to have the app actually installed on the device. The app bills itself as a “fast, free and easy-to-use tool to animate your text and email messages.”

This doesn’t seem to be a case of Apple not aware on the existence of the trademark as Bonansea  says that he has been approached multiple times by Apple through various entities in an attempt to buy the trademark. When he refused to sell, he was threatened with cancellation of his trademark. On reports that Apple new about the existence of his app, he says Apple had to know about it since the company had complied when he had requested several competing apps to be taken down. The legal complaint reads as follows:

“INSTEAD OF USING THE CREATIVITY ON WHICH APPLE DEVELOPED ITS WORLDWIDE REPUTATION, APPLE SIMPLY PLUCKED THE NAME FROM A DEVELOPER ON ITS OWN APP STORE. APPLE COULD HAVE CHANGED ITS DESIRED NAME PRIOR TO ITS ANNOUNCEMENT WHEN IT REALIZED PLAINTIFFS ALREADY USED ANIMOJI FOR THEIR OWN PRODUCT. YET APPLE MADE THE CONSCIOUS DECISION TO TRY TO PILFER THE NAME FOR ITSELF — REGARDLESS OF THE CONSEQUENCES.”

Legal Hurdles

The case isn’t an open and shut as it seems however. It turns out, the trademark was originally filed by Bonansea was for his company emonster inc. That company has since been dissolved in favor of emonster k.k – his new Japanese company. Based on this, Apple has already filed for cancellation of the company held trademark.

However, Emonster’s trademark attorney has filed for a technical correction in ownership claiming that both the companies acted as a single commercial enterprise. However, the correction has been rejected due to it being filed after the request for cancellation. Since then, Bonansea and emonster k.k. have reapplied for the trademark citing the active use of the app since 2014. If it weren’t for this technicality, this would’ve been an open and shut case, now we will have to wait for the court’s judgement.

Learn to code with DIY Modular laptop Pi-Top powered by Raspberry Pi

The Rasberry Pi has been popular with hobbyists right since its first iteration in 2012 when it was a single chip processor running on ARM11 and clocked at 700 Mhz. Today, the Pi 3 offers a quad-core chip based on ARM A53 clocked at almost double the speed at 1.2 GHz combined with 1GB of RAM. While that’s still pretty lightweight even when compared to modern day smartphones, the Rasberry Pi has a host of uses – even spawning a few startups.

Pi-Top

The Rasberry Pi is best known as a mini-computer good for coding projects due to its low cost. However, one startup has instead decided to use it as the brains behind a larger full size laptop  – designed to as a tool to teach coding skills. The original Pi-top made by a startup of the same name came out in 2014 as a modular laptop. The updated variant comes with quite a few improvements.

The new Pi-top is easier to assemble , features an adjustable keyboard that can be moved to reveal the Pi itself and a place for users to attach additional accessories to the laptop – which the company calls Modular Rail. The Pi-top also comes with one accessory right out of the box, an Inventor’s Kit. It includes a breadboard and basic components needed to build projects like a microphone and motion sensors. Just like the original, this Pi-top also runs a custom OS named Polaris.

Other Upgrades

Besides these, the Pi-top also comes with other upgrades including a 1080p & 14-inch LED screen , a sleeker design and a track pad located at the bottom of the keyboard instead of the right side like its predecessor.

At $319, this is the startup’s most expensive device yet which not only puts it in range of Chromebooks and cheaper Windows devices, but also puts it higher than other companies in the sector.

3 golden rules for choosing your Bitcoin wallet?

So you’ve decided to get some Bitcoins, congrats! This short guide will explain exactly what you need to take into account when choosing a Bitcoin wallet. Since there’s such a wide variety of Bitcoin wallets the selection can sometimes be overwhelming, but here are the basic things to keep in mind.

Note: Although this post refers to Bitcoin wallets specifically, the principles stated in this article are relevant for choosing ANY crypto wallet.

Before we begin – here’s what you need to know about Bitcoin wallets

A Bitcoin wallet is just a program that helps you send and receive Bitcoin in a user-friendly manner. Just like you use Outlook or Gmail to manage your emails, you’ll use a Bitcoin wallet to manage your Bitcoins.

The most important part of any Bitcoin wallet is the private key. The private key is a long string of text and numbers that acts as the password to your bitcoins. It’s kind of like a treasure map with the coordinates to where your Bitcoins are hidden. This means that whoever knows your private key can also steal your Bitcoins.

Many wallets today use a seed phrase instead of the long cumbersome private key. This means the private key is replaced with 12-24 random words that act as a private key replacement. This of course seems much more simple, however it’s as equally as important. If someone manages to steal your seed phrase – they can control your bitcoins.

So by now you know that the private key, or seed phrase (depending on which wallet you’re going to use), is the most important part of any Bitcoin wallet. They can also be used to restore your Bitcoins in case the device you keep your wallet on gets lost, stolen or destroyed.

Now let’s move on to choosing your wallet.

Rule #1 – If you’re going to store a large amount of coins, use “cold storage”

Cold storage is a term for any wallet that isn’t connected to the Internet. This means that a hacker won’t be able to steal your private key remotely. There are several examples for cold storage wallets:

Paper wallets – This means you just write your private key down on a piece of paper. This way, the only way to steal your private key is to physically steal the piece of paper. The downside is that pieces of paper can get easily corrupted or lost.

Another downside of paper wallets is the fact that they are only able to receive Bitcoins and not send then. As soon as you’ll want to send Bitcoins from your paper wallet you’ll need to import the private key into a digital wallet that will be able to process your transactions.

Hardware wallets – The most popular form of cold storage are hardware wallets. These are physical devices that hold your private key for you. When you want to send your Bitcoins all you need to do is connect the device to your computer and tell it how much you want to send and where.

The hardware wallet will then sign your transaction digitally and broadcast it to the network. I won’t go into technical details, but it’s important to know that due to the way hardware wallets are built, your private key is always safe even if you connect it to an infected computer.

As Bitcoin gains popularity so do hardware wallets as they supply the ultimate combination of protection and ease of use. The two most notable companies manufacturing hardware wallets today are TREZOR and Ledger.

Unlike all other wallets, hardware wallets come at a price since they are not just a piece of software. However, if you’re going to keep an amount of Bitcoin that you can’t afford to lose, a hardware wallet is the way to go.

Rule #2 – Software wallets are for “change” only

If you want a more instant but less secure solution than cold storage you can use hot wallets. A hot wallet is any type of wallet that’s connected in some way to the internet. This could be a wallet installed on your mobile phone, your laptop or hosted for you on another website.

Hot wallets are considered hackable in general, so only keep small amounts of Bitcoin on them. How small is small? It depends on your own financial situation I guess. Some people will be willing to risk only $100 for the convenience of a hot wallet and others might be willing to risk several thousands.

However not all hot wallets are alike, let’s dive into 2 main types of hot wallets:

Web wallets – these are basically wallets that hold your coins for you. You don’t have access to the private key at all and in general you are at the mercy of the wallet issuer. Example for such wallets are exchanges, gambling sites and basically any site that doesn’t allow you access to your private key.

Self-hosted wallets – These are program which you download to your own device (desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile). The private key / seed is then stored on that device. This gives you full control over your Bitcoins however also puts you in the risk of losing the device.

For example, mobile phones are easily stolen, lost or broken. If for example you drop your phone and it stops working, you can’t access your Bitcoins. That’s why it’s super important to create a wallet backup.

Rule #3 – Back up your private key / seed phrase

Finally, the most important thing to do once you get ANY Bitcoin wallet is to create a backup. Backing up a Bitcoin wallet just means that you’re creating another copy of the private key /seed phrase.

This could be done by writing it down on a piece of paper, or saving it on a separate drive somewhere. It’s important to remember that if someone gets a hold of your backup, it’s basically as if they got control of your whole wallet, so it’s preferable to keep the backup somewhere offline and safe.

That’s it, you can now go and choose your own Bitcoin wallet. Welcome to the wonderful world of cryptocurrencies.

Do you trust your VPN provider- A guide to avoiding bad VPN providers

If there’s anything the infamous Hillary Clinton email scandal teaches us is that how important cybersecurity is and how unaware general public is about it. She was investigated twice.

The reopening of that investigation just a few days before the Election Day was the sole reason for her loss to Donald Trump – despite having won the popular vote by over 3 million votes!

On the deep/dark web, hackers sell these for major profits – and buyers use these details to steal your identity and carry out financial transactions online on your behalf.

With so many threats lurking online, are you wondering – how do I secure my internet browsing? You might be interested in exploring VPN (Virtual Private Network).

Why sudden interest in VPN

As soon as he came to power, Donald Trump opened a much larger already-closed security loophole. He completely dismantled FCC’s internet privacy rules within the United States. It allowed Internet providers to freely spy on you and sell your usage data to third parties without your consent.

This alarmed millions of users, who had previously used internet nonchalantly. Internet searches for the term “Virtual Private Network” spiked overnight to 5-year high numbers.

Why use VPN when you have SSL

The Secure Socket Layer (SSL) transforms your good old but insecurecommunication channel into a secure block with the help of encryption within the HTTP protocol.

So it’s simple, right? You can use SSL and get your connection secured. Some might ask, why use VPN when you have SSL?

There are 2 reasons for it:

1. SSL is implemented by the Website, not by you. If the website doesn’t offer an HTTPS connection, there’s nothing you can do about it.
2. For implementing SSL security you need to buy an expensive “SSL CERTIFICATE”. Many websites do not consider free SSL certificatesreliable. Some websites, especially news sites, don’t consider SSL a priority because they don’t storeuser’s private data. As a result, SSL becomes either a setup overhead or an unnecessary expense.

If a website offers SSL security, it may not offer it for all the pages. So while you might see https on the login page, you won’t see it on any other page.

Google’s pushes for SSL by including it as one of its search engine ranking factors,but it hasn’t been able to expedite the SSL adoption rate.

Beware of a FAKE VPN

A simple Google search reveals a bunch of VPN services that are “free”. All are marketing articles meant to make a sale. Whether it’s an affiliate sale or a direct sale, you can never fully trust its claims.

When shopping for VPN, check for following red flags

• Any kind of logging is bad. But some VPNs only log your email address. Ideally, the lesser the logging, the better VPN service
• Highly convoluted or extremely short Privacy Policy
• IP leaks
• Lack of Kill Switch (this feature automatically stops certain apps from using the regular internet connection when the VPN connection drops!)
• Latest news articles have negative reviews

What is a bad VPN?

Next time you are about to install a VPN client, scroll down their EULA dialog box and check if they log your data.

If they do, they may also be able to sell it without your consent by a simple tweak of the license agreement. Most of it happens in a clandestine manner without user’s consent.

Be wary of these VPNs

Other than logging, issues like download speed and customer support are also very important. Now we will list down a bunch of VPN services and what are their pros and cons.

StrongVPN

StrongVPN doesn’t log any of your traffic or metadata (such as login/logout time, amount of data used, etc.). But that’s about the only pro we could find.

However, their cons onare aplenty:

• Only 5-day money back policy.
• Not all servers use OpenVPN
• Desktop client UI is extremely frustrating – servers may not respond for the supported protocol. When trying to change ports or servers, it doesn’t remember the old configuration.
• No call-in number, no live chat system, limited FAQs.
• Relatively lower speeds as compared to competitors
• Overpriced – limits to only two simultaneous connections.

StrongVPN is only suitable for users who are looking for a simple, cheap tool to bypass Netflix US and Chinese National censorships and for whom speeds don’t matter much. Power users should avoid StrongVPN.

Mullvad VPN

Mullvad provides a strong sense of privacy – you can use Mullvad through a random-generated account number and pay via bitcoins – no email address or credit card required! They also track absolutely nothing

But as we dug deep its problems started to appear:

• Only 3-hour free trial
• No money back policy for cash payments
• Less than 150 servers in just 5 countries
• Doesn’t support L2TP / IPSec
• Doesn’t connect to Netflix
• No iOS or Android app – lengthy process to connect via “OpenVPN Connect” app
• Pathetic performance, lethargic download speeds

Mullvad was built to achieve a political objective rather than as a “good VPN service” – their privacy aspect certainly the strongest; on every other aspect (including performance), Mullvad VPN isn’t even worth mentioning.

PureVPN

PureVPN provides one of the cheapest services at just $3.25 per month for a 2 year-long contract. That is why they have a huge number of servers and over a million customers.

But then some problems cannot be hidden:

• The 7-day refund period has hidden conditions – a 3GB data cap or 100 VPN session cap.
• Well known for DNS leaks, and even IPv4 and IPv6 leaks
• Kill Switch often malfunctions – several users noted that it actually shut down their computer
• Deplorable speeds and almost negligible performance
• Explicitly claims to log of VPN session metadata (which can apparently get people arrested).
• Uses “Virtual VPN Servers” that mimic a different physical location – this is an attractive feature as well as a major security flaw depends on who you ask

PureVPN is a cheap, good-for-nothing VPN knockoff. The only reason they have a million *users is that they have a cheap 2-year plan and good marketing tactics. You might find more skeletons in PureVPN’s closet if you ask them how many of those million customers abandoned their accounts within first 3 months of their purchase.

FrootVPN

FrootVPN is the cheapest VPN service in the market. It is a good VPN provider if you stay in Europe and choose European VPN servers

But so many users have reported so many problems:

• • Very slow speeds (less than 100 servers) and unresponsive customer support
  • No desktop clients for Mac or apps for mobile
  • Claims “no logging” but then also provides your bandwidth usage stats for 6 months
  • Sketchy privacy policy of only 250 words
  • No free or trial plans
  • 30-day “no questions asked” money back policy has a hidden caveat – you must give a reason and the company must determine that it’s reasonable enough to offer a full refund.
  • No killswitch – if the VPN-secured public Wi-Fi connection drops, you wouldn’t even know when you are switched to your insecure data connection

FrootVPN does provide a cheap $2.99 / month plan with yearly payment, but that’s where its features stop. They’re still a growing company – many have verified it’s not a scam! But one shouldn’t fall for their low prices and then suffer low speeds.

PrivateVPN

The best thing about PrivateVPN is that it offers 6 simultaneous collections from all devices. It also has Android and iOS mobile apps, besides the usual Mac and Windows VPN client apps.

Upon further investigation however, the cracks reveal themselves:

• No Kill Switch (Connection Guard in Windows app does something similar)
• No protection from IP leaks
• 24-hour free trial needs a code for checkout, which has to be generated by emailing their support team
• Basic but feature-less client apps, need OpenVPN software

While PrivateVPN does do a lot of things better than other VPN services on this list, there is no single biggest reason to go for it. It is also priced higher while providing a very basic interface. For similar price, you can get much more detailed interface on other VPN services.

Developer Sues Apple For Allegedly Stealing iPhone X ‘Animoji’ Trademark

Apples gets sued over iPhone X Animoji infringement

Animojis for those who don’t remember are animated emojis that are created using the facial recognition features of the iPhone X and were widely talked about coming out of Apple’s September event. They were supposed to be a big deal for the company, however, it now looks like Apple will be fighting off a copyright infringement lawsuit to just keep the name.

3 year old feature

Reports are now coming out that Enrique Bonansea and his company emonster have had an app named Animoji listed on Apple’s app store since 2014 and have held the trademark since 2015. The app allows anyone to receive an iMessage with Animojis attached without the need to have the app actually installed on the device. The app bills itself as a “fast, free and easy-to-use tool to animate your text and email messages.”

This doesn’t seem to be a case of Apple not aware on the existence of the trademark as Bonansea  says that he has been approached multiple times by Apple through various entities in an attempt to buy the trademark. When he refused to sell, he was threatened with cancellation of his trademark. On reports that Apple new about the existence of his app, he says Apple had to know about it since the company had complied when he had requested several competing apps to be taken down. The legal complaint reads as follows:

“INSTEAD OF USING THE CREATIVITY ON WHICH APPLE DEVELOPED ITS WORLDWIDE REPUTATION, APPLE SIMPLY PLUCKED THE NAME FROM A DEVELOPER ON ITS OWN APP STORE. APPLE COULD HAVE CHANGED ITS DESIRED NAME PRIOR TO ITS ANNOUNCEMENT WHEN IT REALIZED PLAINTIFFS ALREADY USED ANIMOJI FOR THEIR OWN PRODUCT. YET APPLE MADE THE CONSCIOUS DECISION TO TRY TO PILFER THE NAME FOR ITSELF — REGARDLESS OF THE CONSEQUENCES.”

Legal Hurdles

The case isn’t an open and shut as it seems however. It turns out, the trademark was originally filed by Bonansea was for his company emonster inc. That company has since been dissolved in favor of emonster k.k – his new Japanese company. Based on this, Apple has already filed for cancellation of the company held trademark.

However, Emonster’s trademark attorney has filed for a technical correction in ownership claiming that both the companies acted as a single commercial enterprise. However, the correction has been rejected due to it being filed after the request for cancellation. Since then, Bonansea and emonster k.k. have reapplied for the trademark citing the active use of the app since 2014. If it weren’t for this technicality, this would’ve been an open and shut case, now we will have to wait for the court’s judgement.

Pi-Top is a Raspberry Pi powered modular laptop to help learn coding and hardware hacks

Learn to code with DIY Modular laptop Pi-Top powered by Raspberry Pi

The Rasberry Pi has been popular with hobbyists right since its first iteration in 2012 when it was a single chip processor running on ARM11 and clocked at 700 Mhz. Today, the Pi 3 offers a quad-core chip based on ARM A53 clocked at almost double the speed at 1.2 GHz combined with 1GB of RAM. While that’s still pretty lightweight even when compared to modern day smartphones, the Rasberry Pi has a host of uses – even spawning a few startups.

Pi-Top

The Rasberry Pi is best known as a mini-computer good for coding projects due to its low cost. However, one startup has instead decided to use it as the brains behind a larger full size laptop  – designed to as a tool to teach coding skills. The original Pi-top made by a startup of the same name came out in 2014 as a modular laptop. The updated variant comes with quite a few improvements.

The new Pi-top is easier to assemble , features an adjustable keyboard that can be moved to reveal the Pi itself and a place for users to attach additional accessories to the laptop – which the company calls Modular Rail. The Pi-top also comes with one accessory right out of the box, an Inventor’s Kit. It includes a breadboard and basic components needed to build projects like a microphone and motion sensors. Just like the original, this Pi-top also runs a custom OS named Polaris.

Other Upgrades

Besides these, the Pi-top also comes with other upgrades including a 1080p & 14-inch LED screen , a sleeker design and a track pad located at the bottom of the keyboard instead of the right side like its predecessor.

At $319, this is the startup’s most expensive device yet which not only puts it in range of Chromebooks and cheaper Windows devices, but also puts it higher than other companies in the sector.

These Are The Fastest Growing Programming Languages

A lot of new programming languages are making their way to the top and JavaScript is holding the top position for the past few years. Seems like the situation is about to change and JavaScript may soon be dethroned by Python. Python is one of the fastest growing languages and by 2019, it would have a clear domination in the programming community.
This is a prediction made by StackOverflow, a programming Q&A centre. With more than 50 million amateur and professional developers visiting the website, StackOverflow is one of the qualified companies to make such a survey. Based on the huge increase in the questions from developers on Python and the data they have collected, StackOverflow made this survey possible.
Stack Overflow data scientist David Robinson said in a blog post that, “The term ‘fastest-growing’ can be really hard to define precisely, but we make the case that Python has a solid claim to become the fastest-growing major programming language.

Just in the past five years, Python went from least to top six most popular programming languages with a whopping 2.5x increase in the questions and views on the language. StackOverflow also stated that these statistics are related to developers from countries with “high-income”  and represent the trend in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and other such countries.
The secret behind the growth of Python is its flexibility and versatility. Python is generally used by web and desktop developers, devops/sysadmin and recently even data scientists and machine-learning with Python became popular.

“It seems like Python is used in every domain — system operations, web development, deployment, scientific modeling, etc etc. There is no other language that is so versatile,” says Jacqueline Kazil, board director of the Python Software Foundation (PSF).