It’s 2019 and IBM Is Still Trying to Find a Use Case for Blockchain
IBM claims that six banks will issue stablecoins using its World Wire protocol which is based on the Stellar network. According to the tech giant, three banks have publicly committed to the initiative, and the remainder will reveal themselves soon. The announcement joins the resurgence of blockchain razzmatazz this year that feels eerily similar to the last time distributed ledger technology (DLT) was the cat’s meow back in...
Three Pirate TV Device Sellers Jailed For a Total of 17 Years
Running pirate streaming platforms, such as now ubiquitous IPTV services currently available all over the Internet, is undoubtedly a profitable proposition for gray and black-market entrepreneurs. For three men in the UK, however, that financial success has come with a hefty price tag attached. According to information provided by the Premier League, three men from the UK were jailed yesterday for a total of 17 years for running...
Flood of 4K James Bond Leaks Further Point to iTunes Breach
The ongoing battle between copyright holders and pirates is often described as a cat and mouse game, especially when it comes to content protection. While most regular releases can be ripped or decrypted nowadays, 4K content remains a challenge to breach. Up until a few days ago, pirate sites had never seen a decrypted 4K download from Apple’s video platform. However, a flurry of recent leaks, including many titles from the...
Privacy-Focused Search Engine Wants Copyright Directive to Pass
Launched in 2013, French-based search engine Qwant markets itself as a privacy-friendly service. Currently one of the top 50 most-visited sites in France, the service claims not track its users, unlike competitors such as Google. It also differs from the world’s leading search engine in other ways too, most notably in its support of one of Europe’s most controversial legislative proposals in recent times. In an interview...
Scaling relational databases with Apache Spark SQL and DataFrames
Relational databases are here to stay, regardless of the hype and the advent of newer databases often called NoSQL databases. The simple reason is that relational databases enforce essential structure, constraints, and provide a nice, declarative language to query data (which we love): SQL! read...
