Technology

The new Dyson WashG1 brings the British brand's expertise in cleaning carpets to washing your hard floors.

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A US jury has ruled Amazon Web Services (AWS) willingly infringed on two patents, and must now pay $30.5 million for violating the patent owner's rights in computer networking and broadcasting technology.

The offending technologies were AWS’s Cloudfront content delivery network and Virtual Private Cloud virtual network - which infringed on the patents originally owned by Boeing, but obtained by Acceleration Bay.

The two patents in this case are said to involve methods of streamlining data delivery across a network. Without getting too technical, the technologies allow data to be sent from peer to peer and flow around slow or broken connections by forming a network.

Assertion entity

Acceleration Bay describes itself as an ‘Incubator & Investor’, and recently won a separate patent trial against Activision, in which the video game developer was ordered to pay $23.4 million.

The final court’s judgement in the AWS case will come soon, but the payout could yet triple, due to the fact that Amazon 'willfully' breached the patents. AWS cloud services reportedly brings in around $9 billion operating profit per quarter - which is around 62% of Amazon’s total, so it probably won’t be hit too hard by the charges.

This isn’t the first time AWS has faced opposition with patented technology, having had to pay $525 million in damages earlier in 2024 after losing a cloud storage patent case.

The tech giant has also had a long-running spat with Nokia, with both firms bringing forward patent lawsuits against each other in recent years - most recently, in August 2024, AWS accused Nokia of over a dozen infringements for cloud computing technologies.

Since AWS is a dominant player in the cloud storage game, naturally it controls a lot of the technologies involved, which it claimed Nokia was using without permission.

Via The Register

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New sources claim that AMD’s RDNA 4-based graphics cards, originally rumored to be launching at the end of 2024, are behind schedule and now expected to launch in 2025.

The news doesn’t come completely out of nowhere. We previously reported on hardware leaker Kepler’s claim that AMD would not release their RDNA 4-based GPUs until CES 2025. But conflicting rumors suggested a late 2024 release.

More interesting than the news itself are the alleged reasons for the delay. Moore’s Law is Dead revealed in a recent YouTube video exclusively from a reliable source that the RDNA 4 line of GPUs is delayed because AMD is struggling to shift its top-end RDNA 3-based GPUs, in particular those built around the Navi 31, like the RX 7900 and RX 7900 XTX.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, built on Navi 31 architecture (Image credit: Future)

Reports suggest AMD’s RDNA 4 focuses on delivering value for money, strong performance, and energy efficiency, keeping its sights firmly on the mid-range market. Nvidia, on the other hand, remains focused on its next-gen RTX 5000 series, opting to prioritize high-performance instead.

The RDNA 4 GPUs consist of the Navi 44 and 48 and will also focus on improved raytracing; they’ll have better clock speeds, GDDR6 memory, and AMD’s infinity cache. It’s said that they will offer a 10-30% performance improvement over the RDNA 3-based cards.

It’s not surprising, then, that the top-range RDNA 3-based models aren’t selling so well. Some customers may be waiting for the next-gen cards that will improve on performance at a lower price point. Others may even overlook the RDNA 4 models in anticipation for AMD’s already-in-development RDNA 5 GPUs, which are set to potentially feature more high-end models, and according to wccftech, “will be built on a completely different architecture”.

Given these reports, it seems wise for AMD to delay the launch – if there were ever plans for a late 2024 launch – to shift the remaining RDNA 3 stocks. Moore’s Law is Dead’s source also mentioned that AMD’s mid-range RDNA 3s were selling fine. The issue of low sales is only affecting its top tier range.

So it appears to remain true that AMD will first debut its flagship Navi 48 at CES 2025, with the Navi 44 still having its launch somewhere in Q2 of 2025.

As it stands, 2025 now looks like the year AMD’s RDNA 4 GPUs will finally hit the market.

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It's a miracle that the free Internet lasted as long as it did. It's been nearly 30 years of mostly unfettered, free content access to everything from magazine articles and newspapers to videos and recipes. The steady devolution of the online advertising business made free online content an economic equation that no one could solve.

If you need further evidence that your free internet is evaporating like snow on an early spring day, look at CNN.com. The popular online news platform, an arm of the still popular cable news network, is putting up a paywall.

It won't block you from seeing all CNN.com posts but will limit the number you can see for free. It's unclear if that will be a few a day or a dozen per month. However, once you hit the limit, CNN.com will prompt you to subscribe for $3.99 a month or $29.99 a year. That's not a lot, and for all-you-can-eat access, some might consider it a bargain. Even so, it'll be an adjustment, especially for those who've been accessing the site since it launched "on the World Wide Web" in August of 1995.

CNN.com is not alone in this. TechRadar competitor The Verge is reportedly considering a paywall and I can guarantee similar discussions are underway at every "free website". Good content, everything from short news posts and long product reviews to essays and videos, is costly to make. If display ads (the ads that surround this post) aren't paying the bills, possibly because too many of you use an ad blocker or fewer people are viewing your content and the ads because Google is delivering AI-generated content synopsis on search results, you have to find a new way to fund that content.

Other sources

Even without those forces, traditional media like CNN.com is struggling because a large segment of the online audience is getting their news elsewhere: usually YouTube or TikTok. It's unlikely a two-minute TikTok has all the depth of a CNN.com or Washington Post piece, but that doesn't matter. Gen Z trusts those sources and will usually turn there first.

Obviously, many of us still rely on these traditional OG websites for news and information and are not used to paying for the content. And, to be honest, we don't usually willingly enter Paywall land.

There are strategies honed on platforms like The New York Times, The Atlantic, Business Insider, and others, where we find ways to see more than our share of free content. Usually, this involves opening another browser window in Private Browsing or Incognito Mode, which means you don't carry the cookies that tell the website how many posts you've already viewed. This method usually only works for a single post, but there is satisfaction in reading that one extra story.

I know I'm the last person who should be doing this, and sometimes I wonder how I can be so cheap. The truth is, I already pay for a lot of content. I have subscriptions to The New York Times and The New Yorker. We also subscribe to our local newspaper.

Also, wasn't the Internet supposed to be free?

Modeling subscriptions

Maybe not. The World Wide Web was launched for free almost by accident. When the Internet arrived, it had no interface. Then, some enterprising programmers built early web browsers that could translate Internet data via HTML into browsable and interlinked pages. (Yes, a massive oversimplification of what really happened.)

The Web grew so fast and spread so wide that no one even had time to figure out a decent economic model. We did understand the web offered content consumption and audience measurability in ways virtually impossible with traditional media. That was a bonanza for traditional advertisers who desperately wanted access to all those eyeballs.

And they got them in droves. However, the efficacy of these ads started sliding almost as soon as they started appearing. There were a lot of bad actors back then who thought it was OK not only to run online ads but also to make them pop-ups. Visiting some sites was like playing a game of whack-a-mole. Naturally, if you visited an adult site, you probably got what you deserved.

It's been almost two decades of us knowing that a full-time free internet was unsustainable, but the reality is just now catching up with our consumption. Free was a dream we all had and it was a wonderful one while it lasted. Now we're waking up on if not the wrong side of the bed, the costly side of the paywall.

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The WashG1 is a dedicated wet floor cleaner and Dyson's first attempt to prove that it doesn't just do carpets. It launched in the UK and Australia last month but has just gone on sale in the US. It's currently only available to buy direct from Dyson, and has a list price of $699.99.

Unclutch those pearls; we all knew it was going to be expensive. I do think that some Dyson products justify their eye-watering price tags, but in this case, there are things worth factoring in before you decide to gamble your child's college fund on a wet floor cleaner.

I tested one out and you can get the full low-down in my Dyson WashG1 review, but the gist is that it works fantastically well on perfectly smooth, flat floors like linoleum or polished concrete but is nowhere near as impressive on textured or uneven floors (including tiled floors with grouting gaps).

(Image credit: Future)

This is Dyson's first dedicated wet floor cleaner (I say 'dedicated' because we do have the Dyson V15s Submarine, which is a vacuum cleaner with a wet floorhead that can be swapped in). Significantly for this brand, which has built its reputation on being really good at moving air about, it doesn't use suction. Instead, it employs a combination of agitation, hydration and separation to get your floors gleaming.

Water is expelled through the cleaner head, rollers help loosen the dirt and pick up things like hair and solid particles, and then the inner mechanisms separate liquid and solid spillages. That last part is designed to make maintenance easier.

Should you buy one?

It's very good at certain things. Like today's best Dyson vacuums, it's extremely maneuverable; the floorhead can pivot any which way, and it'll get right up close to baseboards, too. The fact that it can handle liquid and solid waste is really helpful for things like dinnertime messes. I have a small niece and nephew who cannot complete a meal without coating everything in the vicinity with whatever they've been eating, and a once-over with the WashG1 is by far the least disgusting way to deal with it that I've found so far. The base will take care of some of the maintenance by running a self-clean cycle, when you dock it, too.

(Image credit: Future)

However, it's not worth the investment if you have uneven floors. The WashG1 will struggle to clean them evenly, as I discovered when I tested mine on a flagstone floor. Because the rollers don't really 'scrub', it's only really capable of tackling surface dirt.

That includes missing the grouting cracks between tiles. (Apparently, the engineers found that adding more water is a more effective way to tackle stubborn dirt than rubbing at it, and while they might have a bit of a point, I still think there are limitations to this approach.)

Those niggles aside, it still might be a good investment for some shoppers. Because it's brand new, don't expect discounts any time soon – I have my fingers crossed for a price-drop in the Black Friday sales, though.

• View the WashG1 for $699.99 at Dyson

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Hackers have been spotted using the Docker Engine API to target various containers with cryptojackers and other malware.

Cybersecurity researchers at Datadog, who recently observed one such campaign and reported on it in an in-depth analysis, noted the criminals first looked for internet-exposed Docker Engine APIs that are not password-protected, using different internet scanning tools.

Then, they used the Docker API to spawn an Alpine container, and mount the underlying host’s file system inside the container. The next step is to execute a shell command to pull an initialization script that effectively kickstarts the infection chain.

No evidence of abuse

The Docker Engine API is a Docker-provided interface that allows developers and systems to interact with the Docker daemon, programmatically. Via the API, users can manage and control Docker containers, networks, and images, all through HTTP requests.

The chain starts with data transfer tools which, in turn, deploy XMRig. This is a popular cryptojacker, a tool that uses the compromised device’s computing power to generate cryptocurrency tokens and send them to the attacker’s wallet address.

After that, the attackers deploy a few scripts to hide the presence of XMRig, after which they go for additional payloads that allow them to move laterally. Other Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, and SSH servers are targeted, and ultimately assimilated into an actor-controlled Docker Cluster.

The cluster allows the crooks to use Docker Swarm’s orchestration features for command and control tasks.

At press time, the researchers have not yet identified the group behind this campaign. The tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) of this campaign do overlap with the ones usually used by TeamTNT, they suggested.

"This campaign demonstrates that services such as Docker and Kubernetes remain fruitful for threat actors conducting cryptojacking at scale," Datadog said, before adding that as long as these APIs remain online without proper protection, they will be considered “low-hanging fruit” to crooks.

Via The Hacker News

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