Soundcloud has Signed a Licensing Deal With Sony Music

SoundCloud - Licensing Deal Signed with Sony Music

According to sources with information of the situation, licensing deal has been signed with Sony Music by SoundCloud, providing its deals with all three main labels, making way for the subscription service it had scheduled to launch later this year. It is said that Sony Music would be getting equity from SoundCloud in the deal.

As per the agreement SoundCloud will give access to Sony Music artists comprising of Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Future, Calvin Harris, Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, Miguel and Justin Timberlake. The streaming music service intends to launch a paid subscription plan and a source close to the situation informed that the deals SoundCloud had struck with the majors does not permit it to build a full on-demand service akin to Spotify or Apple Music.

It is said that SoundCloud has already struck deals with Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group as well as Merlin, an independent network of labels; Sony Music had been the last holdout. But obtaining a deal with Sony Music had been challenging. According to Billboard, the label pulled its music of SoundCloud last year when the reports revealed that Sony Music had not been happy with the lack of monetization opportunities.

A Mid-Tier Service

Since the deal is done and SoundCloud has obtained the blessings of the music industry, it needs to figure out how to monetize the services without isolating the 175 million users who seemed to be using it without any cost.

 According to sources, it is said that the company seems to be serious regarding monetizing the service and one industry source has informed The Verge that they need to make this work if SoundCloud has a long term future. Initial discussions had SoundCloud’s paid offering at $10 a month when it launches later this year. There had also been talks of a mid-tier service which were priced less than that.

Together with the excess of songs which live only on SoundCloud already, SoundCloud tends to have an advantage over competing streaming services that largely offer the same music catalog. SoundCloud had refrained from commenting on rumours and Sony Music did not respond to request for comment.

Goal of Launching Subscription Tier

Sealing a related pact in January with No. 1 recording company Universal over its 2015 deal with Warner, Sony agreement seemed to the final obstacle between SoundCloud and its goal of launching a subscription tier. SoundCloud known as the YouTube for audio draws a great number of music listeners online though in the past it has annoyed the music due to its early reputation of being careless with regards to royalties.

SoundCloud had experienced some of the same industry tension which YouTube had encountered while it handled to manage unauthorised uploads of copyrighted material at a particular site where the users can upload their own sound files. This made it difficult for SoundCloud to repair deals together like Sony and Universal. But service’s growing popularity made it difficult for the music industry to tune out. SoundCloud presently has a limited advertising business and intends to introduce subscription services in the U.S. as well as other markets later in the year.

Adobe Issues Emergency Patch For Flash Bug

Adobe Issued Emergency Patch for Flash Media Player

Emergency patch for Flash media player had been issued by Adobe to close the loopholes in the most popularly used software. Adobe had mentioned in its security advisory, that they are aware of a report that an exploit for CVE-2016-1010 is being used in limited targeted attacks and the notice advised Flash users to install the update at the earliest. The patch in total closes 23 separate security bugs in Flash player.

Those invading the security holes would be in a position of overtaking a computer and steal valuable data or spy on the owner of the system. For updates, users need to apply the patch quickly since several of the problem related seems to be critical and of the highest level. The holes are found in Flash and in versions of the other Adobe programs utilised on several platforms and devices.

Those devices at risk comprise of Windows machines, Macs and Linus computers together with phone running Android and iOS. Several different security researches inclusive of experts at Alibaba, Kaspersky Labs, Google and Microsoft had alerted Adobe to the issue with its Flash player. Most of the security firms have suggested that users could uninstall the flash player in order to refrain from being victim to malicious attachments or booby-trapped webpages.

Recommended to Uninstall Flash/Java/Silverlight

The patch brings about the latest version of Flash to 21.0.0.182 for Windows and Mac and 11.2.202.577 for Linux. Readers are recommended to uninstall Flash, Java and Silverlight browser extensions to check if they are essential. For several individuals, it is not essential and the reduced attack surface had lowered the chances of being visited by remote code-execution attacks.

Those who tend to depend on Flash in order to access the intranet of a company or any other site should consider utilising a dedicated browser for the same. In an effort at preventing attackers, several of the web firms have now stopped using Flash. Recently most of the other companies had issued security patches and the update of Firefox closed 40 single susceptibilities, which were over half of those considered as critical.

Security Bulletin Released By Adobe

Besides, Google has also issued for Chrome an update which among others had closed three security holes considered as `high’ severity and paid bug bounties amounting to $13,000 to the two researchers who had exposed the loopholes. Microsoft had recently issued its steady monthly security update which had attempted 13 issues in various programs comprising of the Internet Explorer as well as Edge browsers.

A security bulletin APSB16-08 had been released by Adobe acknowledging Kaspersky Lab for reporting CVE-1015-1010. The exposure could probably enable an attacker to take control of the affected system. The researchers of Kaspersky Lab researchers observed the usage of this weakness in a limited number of target attacks.

Adobe had mentioned in a December statement that though standards such as HTML5 would be the web platform for the future for all devices, Flash tends to continue to be utilised in main categories like Web gaming as well as premium video wherein fresh standards would have to be fully mature.

Bionic Fingertip' Offers Feeling

Artificial Fingertip Provides Physical Feedback

An artificial fingertip providing physical feedback to the user had been developed by European researchers. Amputee Dennis Aabo Sorensen had taken part in a clinical trial that had his nerves surgically linked to the bionic fingertip enabling him to experience feeling as well as distinguish between the different surfaces. The new bionic fingertip helped the amputee to feel smooth and the rough textures.

Developed by scientist at Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne –EPFL, Switzerland and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy, the artificial fingertip had been connected to the nerves in the upper arm of amputee. The device provided Sorensen the ability of distinguishing between rough and smooth surfaces with 96% accuracy according to the report.

Sorensen mentioned that the stimulation felt almost like what he felt with his hand. For the success of this, the nerves in the arm of the amputee had to be connected to the artificial fingertip and a machine controlled the movement of the device as it felt the textured plastic. While the fingertip moved along the plastic, the sensor generated an electrical signal which was translated in a series of electrical spikes to replicate the nervous system, before delivering to Sorensen’s nerves.

Tactile Information Delivered Through Fine Needles

According to the team behind the study, they state that they compared the results of the bionic finger with those of non-amputees. They mentioned in a press release that `the tactile information was delivered through fine needles which were temporarily attached to the arm’s median nerve through the skin. The non-amputees were in a position to distinguish roughness in textures 77% of the time’.

The research is said to be the latest in growing cannon of global work involving improved functions of artificial limbs and the work comprises of prosthetic which tend to operate with brain machine interfaces. A separate mind controlled limb, in February had enabled a person to wiggle individual fingers of bionic hand for the first time, where the researchers at Johns Hopkins University had tested the prosthetic on a non-amputee.

However they already had 128 electrodes implanted surgically in the brain to help in monitoring epilepsy. With the use of the pre-developed system, the researchers mapped the person’s brain, taking control of the arm.

Cybathlon- Swiss Hosted Olympics for Bionic Athletes

BrainGate, a company creating brain-machine interfaces, had individually developed a chip which could be inserted into the brain in order to control a robotic arm. The work from BrainGate enabled users to be capable of moving the arm, for instance to raise a glass to their mouth.

In order to encourage the research of bionic limbs as well as brain controlled devices, it is said that October would be seeing the first Cybathlon, which is a Swiss hosted Olympics for bionic athletes and their robotic technologies. Working on the project, Calogero Oddo stated that enabling an amputee to be able in differentiating between textures would be utilised over numerous industries.

 He adds that `it would also be translated to other applications like artificial touch in robotic for surgery, rescue as well as manufacturing. From the earlier work of EPFL, Sorensen was able to feel sensory information using a complete artificial hand.. Conducted in 2014, the work enabled him to grasp objects as well as able to identify what he had been touching on being blindfolded.

'Meta-Skin' Truly Cloaks Objects From Radar

Meta-Skin – Manipulate Electromagnetic Waves

A team at Iowa State University led by electrical and computer engineering professor Jiming Song together with associate professor Liang Dong have developed a meta-material known as `meta-skin’. Co-authors are Iowa State graduate students Siming Yang, Peng Liu and Qiugu Wang and the former Iowa State undergraduate Mingda Yang.Meta-materials are manmade materials which tend to have the potentials greater than the sum of their single components.

The meta-skin takes its name from meta-materials that are composites having properties which are not found in nature and can manipulate electromagnetic waves. They came up with rows of split ring resonators that were embedded in layers of silicone sheets and the electric resonators were filled with galinstan, a metal alloy which is liquid at room temperature with less toxic than the other liquid metals like mercury.

These resonators are small rings having an outer radius of 2.5 millimetres with a thickness of half a millimetre and have a 1 millimetre gap. This is required to create a small curved segment of liquid wire.The rings tend to create electric inductors while the gap creates electric capacitors.

Meta-material – Low Toxicity- Used Commercially

Together they tend to create a resonator which can trap and suppress specific radar waves at a particular frequency, according to the university, on stretching and flexing the polymer meta-skin, the same can be tuned in reducing the reflection of an extensive range of radar frequencies.

The engineers have created their meta-material after embedding rows of minute split-ring resonators within silicone sheets and these resonators comprise of liquid metal alloy galinstan that is gallium, indium and tin. It is used commercially having low toxicity when compared to the other liquid metals.

The meta-material when tested by the team on wrapping it round a dielectric cylindrical rod at various angles, it was observed that it did well and reached a radar suppression of around 75% in the 8 to 10 gigahertz range.

As per the Physics Factbook, the band is utilised for civil marine radar, tracking radar, airborne weather avoidance radar system to detect mortar as well as artillery projectile and police speed meters. The team reported in the journal Scientific Reports that inspite of constant measurements, the meta-skin did not show any signs of exhaustion.

Meta-material – Next-Gen Stealth Aircraft

The engineers are of the belief that their stretchy meta-material would one day cover next-gen stealth aircraft. Dong mentioned in a university press release that the long term goal is to shrink the size of these devices and then they could do it with higher frequency electromagnetic waves like visible or infrared light – the visible light, the holy grail for cloaking materials.

The engineer mentioned in their paper that the present meta-skin technology would find several applications in electromagnetic frequency tuning, scattering suppression and shielding. Doug who has a background in fabricating micro and nanoscale devices has been working with liquids and polymers while Song has expertise in looking for new applications of electromagnetic waves. Working together, they expect to prove an idea that the electromagnetic waves, the shorter wavelengths of visible light could be curbed with flexible, tuneable liquid-metal technologies.

Web Browser Introduces Built-in Ad-Blocker

Opera Presented Built-in Ad-blocking Feature

Opera, a software company has presented a built-in ad-blocking feature in its internet browser that would enable users to surf the web without viewing ads that would be depriving websites of its revenue. The software company had announced the feature recently stating that the tool would enable users the option of choosing to block ads from a particular website or not, at the time of browsing the internet. The company also states that utilising the ad blocker on its browsers would load web pages 90% quicker than using Internet Explorer and 45% faster than using Google Chrome with ad-blocker extension.

According to web analytics service StatCounter, about 5% of the internet browsing is done by using Opera. Google Chrome in comparison seems to be the most used browser with 45% of action. The company had explained in a blog post, the reasons for the introduction of the tool was to progress the consumer experience and send messages to advertisers that the internet ads seem to be too big and disturbing. Krystian Kolondra, senior vice president of global engineering for Opera had mentioned in a blog post that `presently bloated online ads use more download bandwidth causing webpages to load slowly, at time covering the content that one is trying to see or trying to trick into clicking `fake download buttons’.

NY Times Tested System due to Rising Response of Ad-Blocking

He added that another rising concern was privacy and tracking of online behaviour. Though ad-free browsing tends to be faster and much more convenient for web users, websites seem to end up paying a price.By default, ad-blocker is activated but when a page with adverts tends to get loaded, a pop-up seems to appear prompting if one would like to block ads and surf the web faster.

If the blocking is turned on, users will be able to view how much load time has been saved. They could also add some sites to an exception list enabling adverts to run if they choose to support. As per a report by PageFair and Adobe, ad-blocking charge digital publishers an estimated $22 billion by way of revenue in 2015 with about 198 million people all over the world utilising the software. Due to the rising response of ad-blocking, the New York Times had started testing a system recently which identified visitors to the news site utilising ad-blocker, asking them to buy a subscription or whitelist the site.

Opera had followed Samsung and mobile phone Company `Three’ in employing ad-blocking services. Earlier, users had to download and install ad-blocking software. As per Eleni Marouli, senior analysts at HIS Technology, a trend of telecom companies are attempting to be included in the mobile advertising ecosystem.Marouli mentioned in a report that `Telcos have traditionally been just data `pipes’ that provided the infrastructure for mobile internet and hence mobile advertising.

They had attempted to monetise content through advertising but had made little progress in claiming significant market share’. She further added that the ad blocking announcement by `Three’ had been a pleas to companies such as Facebook and Google to include Three and other mobile operators in the mobile advertising value chain. The feature is said to be available in the latest version of the developer browser and if the test tends to be successful, it would make it to the regular version.