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Thursday, March 14, 2013

Cyberattacks Prominent in Obama Call With New Chinese President

Cyberthreats featured prominently in President Obama’s congratulatory call to the new Chinese president, Xi Jinping, on Thursday.

The president used the occasion to discuss the loss of United States intellectual property from cyberattacks. The mere mention of cyberthreats is a step forward for an administration that has been reluctant to confront Beijing on Chinese military attacks even as billions of dollars’ worth of trade secrets have been stolen.

But a spate of recent headlines about Chinese cyberattacks on The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and others have thrust the issue on the diplomatic stage.  A report by Mandiant, a computer security firm, tying hundreds of attacks back to one Chinese military uit, made the issue even harder to ignore.

Mr. Obama has been increasingly vocal about cyberthreats, but has not gone as far as to call out China by name. In his State of the Union address, he was careful to omit China when he said “we know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets.” And when the Obama administration sent the nation’s Internet providers a confidential list of Internet addresses tied to a hacking group that had stolen terabytes of data from American corporations, it failed to mention that every single address could be traced to the Chinese military cybercommand.

But privately, administration officials have said they plan to tell China’s new leaders that the volume and sophistication of Chinese cyberattacks have become so intense that they threaten the relationship between Washington and Beijing.

“In any discussion with China, the U.S. needs to have three agenda items: One, cybersecurity; two, cybersecurity; and three, cybersecurity,” Mike! Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview.

China has long denied that it is responsible for cyberattacks on American companies and has said that it too is a victim of such attacks. And in discussions with American officials, Chinese representatives often refuse to discuss economic espionage.

“They say that the topic of economic espionage is ‘embarrassing’ for them,” said James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has participated in such discussions. “They say, in the U.S. cyberwarriors are treated as heroes but those who participate in economic espionage are treated like criminals. In China, the line is not so clear.”



Cyberattacks Prominent in Obama Call With New Chinese President

Cyberthreats featured prominently in President Obama’s congratulatory call to the new Chinese president, Xi Jinping, on Thursday.

The president used the occasion to discuss the loss of United States intellectual property from cyberattacks. The mere mention of cyberthreats is a step forward for an administration that has been reluctant to confront Beijing on Chinese military attacks even as billions of dollars’ worth of trade secrets have been stolen.

But a spate of recent headlines about Chinese cyberattacks on The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and others have thrust the issue on the diplomatic stage.  A report by Mandiant, a computer security firm, tying hundreds of attacks back to one Chinese military uit, made the issue even harder to ignore.

Mr. Obama has been increasingly vocal about cyberthreats, but has not gone as far as to call out China by name. In his State of the Union address, he was careful to omit China when he said “we know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets.” And when the Obama administration sent the nation’s Internet providers a confidential list of Internet addresses tied to a hacking group that had stolen terabytes of data from American corporations, it failed to mention that every single address could be traced to the Chinese military cybercommand.

But privately, administration officials have said they plan to tell China’s new leaders that the volume and sophistication of Chinese cyberattacks have become so intense that they threaten the relationship between Washington and Beijing.

“In any discussion with China, the U.S. needs to have three agenda items: One, cybersecurity; two, cybersecurity; and three, cybersecurity,” Mike! Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview.

China has long denied that it is responsible for cyberattacks on American companies and has said that it too is a victim of such attacks. And in discussions with American officials, Chinese representatives often refuse to discuss economic espionage.

“They say that the topic of economic espionage is ‘embarrassing’ for them,” said James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has participated in such discussions. “They say, in the U.S. cyberwarriors are treated as heroes but those who participate in economic espionage are treated like criminals. In China, the line is not so clear.”



Saudi Human Rights Record Comes Under New Scrutiny

Saudi Arabia’s human rights record came under scrutiny again this week after seven men were publicly executed and a court sentenced two prominent civil rights activists to jail.

On Wednesday, the seven men, who had been arrested in 2005 and 2006 for armed robbery, were executed by firing squad. The executions drew criticism from a number of organizations including the European Union and the United Nations, which alleged that their confessions were coerced and that some of them men were arrested as juveniles. Amnesty International called the punishment an act of “sheer brutality.”

“Under international safeguards,” the United Nations commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, said in a statement,”capital punishment may be imposed only for ‘the most serious crimes’ and only after the most rigorous judicial process. As I pointed out to the Government of Saudi Arabia before the men were executed, neither of those fundamental criteria appear to have been fulfilled in these cases.”

She added: “I am also extremely concerned that the death sentences were imposed largely based on initial confessions allegedly extracted under torture, and that the allegations of torture were not investigated

In the activists’ case, a Saudi criminal court on March 9 sentenced Mohammed F. al-Qahtani to 10 years in jail and Abdullah al-Hamid to five years in jail on charges that included “destabilizing security by calling for protests,” “spreading false information to outside sources,” “undermining national unity,” and “setting up an illegal human rights organiz! ation,” a report by Human Rights Watch said this week.

The verdict touched off a wave of criticism that the country’s judicial system is politicized and that it only addresses dissenting voices by silencing them.

The Saudi criminal court also imposed a travel ban on the men after they serve their prison terms and disbanded the organization they founded, the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, which had helped Saudi families of detainees who had been held without charges or trial.

“This is simply an outrageous case, which shows the extremes Saudi authorities are prepared to go to silence moderate advocates of reform and greater respect for human rights,” said Eric Goldstein, the deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division for Human Rights Watch.

Amnesty International said in a statement that the imprisonment of the two men was “yet another stain” on the country’s record when it comes to attacking free expression.

“We consider that the two human rights activists have been imprisoned solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association and are therefore prisoners of conscience who should be released immediately and unconditionally,” said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa director for Amnesty International.

Some reports questioned how far Saudi Arabia’s western all! ies, Brit! ain and the United States, are prepared to go in raising such human rights issues, especially in light of several high-profile official visits to the kingdom this month.

Secretary of State John Kerry visited Saudi Arabia early last week before the verdicts of the two activists, a spokeswoman for the State Department, Victoria Nuland, said in a briefing on March 11, when asked about the sentences. She said the United States and Saudi Arabia had an “ongoing and robust dialogue” on “a wide range of political reform issues, including human rights for individuals.”

But we are concerned that these two very prominent Saudi human rights activists have been sentenced to prison. You know that we always make strong representations for human rights activists wherever we are around the world.

Jerome Taylor wrote in the British newsaper The Independent on Wednesday that Prince Charles was expected to visit the kingdom on Friday.

For the struggling human rights activists and reformists in the kingdom, visits from the U.S. and Britain are a consistent source of disappointment. While London and Washington berate Moscow for its ongoing support of the Assad regime, they rarely if ever go public with criticisms of the Al Sauds - their closest ally in the gulf.

Last week, both the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, and the Attorney General, Eric Holder, returned from separate trips to the kingdom. Between their visits, the Saudi regime was emboldened enough to press ahead with the jailing of Mohammed Fahd al-Qahtani and Abdullah al-Hamed - two of the country’s most prominent non-violent reform advoca! tes. In t! he few days between the U.S. delegations and Prince Charles’s arrival, the king also found time to reject clemency for the Abha Seven, despite documented evidence that confessions were extracted under torture, that the men were not appointed adequate legal representation and that most of them were juveniles when they committed their alleged crimes.

Ahmed al-Omran, a Saudi blogger and journalist, mentioned the United States “concern” in an article about the arrests. On his @ahmed Twitter account, he noted that the two activists had preferred jail if the alternative meant being forced to halt their work.

Mr. Qahtani and Mr. Hamid had used Twitter and other social media forums to keep their followers informed. They posted messages on their organization’s Web site urging people to attend their trial, condemned arbitrary arrests, or tried to drum up support for hunger strikes. In a 2011 posting, the Saudi judiciary was called “one of the tools of state-sponsored terrorism.”

Mr. Qahtani continued to post messages on his Twitter account as @MFQahtani until a day before the court verdict. In one message, he noted that he had attended a lecture seated next to a man who had been injured by the police.

Buraida has been the scene of protests against the detentions of Saudis without trial.

The verdicts also set off reaction on Twitter by Saudi writers and activists, as aprominent Saudi blogger, Eman al-Nafjan, noted in an online compilation. It linked to a recent CNN interview in which Mr. Qahtani noted that he was aware he could lose his freedom as he pursued the foundation’s goals.

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.



British Comedian Confronts Russian Lawmaker on ‘Gay Propaganda’ Ban

MOSCOW â€" The British comedian and author Stephen Fry brought a sharp tongue and a Twitter following of millions on Thursday when he confronted a Russian lawmaker who drafted the ban on “homosexual propaganda,” in the city of St. Petersburg.

Mr. Fry, who is openly gay, arrived in Russia with a BBC television crew on Tuesday, to conduct interviews for “Out There,” a documentary on homosexuality in various countries.

But many of Mr. Fry’s followers on the social network were confused, stunned even, when he mentioned that he would interiew City Councilman Vitaly Milonov, a fiery conservative best known for spearheading a $10.7 million lawsuit against Madonna for supposedly promoting lesbianism to minors during a concert last August.

Mr. Milonov posted photographs of the two men chatting amicably in his office before the interview on VK, Russia’s answer to Facebook. (The photographs also showed that the councilman’s computer screen was on a Google Image search page reading “KOSOVO IS SERBIA,” hinting at his interest in defending the pan-Slavic Orthodox Christian nation against all assaults.)

A screenshot from the VK.com page of the Russian lawmaker Vitaly Milonov showed him meeting Stephen Fry in his office in St. Petersburg on Thursday.VK.com A screenshot from the VK.com page of the Russian lawmaker Vitaly Milonov showed him meeting Stephen Fry in his office in St. Petersburg on Thursday.

The interview, Mr. Fry reported later on Twitter, was an intense exchange.

Mr. Milonov, for his part, told a St. Petersburg news site, “according to Stephen Fry, Russians are uneducated â€" more specifically, partially educated barbarians.” Still, Mr. Milonov called the frank exchange valuable, since, he said, Mr. Fry is not a diplomat and therefore is more open about voicing “what the British society and the British leadership thinks.”

The councilman also told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that he would pray for Mr. Fry and his family. “It was curious, like touching another civilization. I mostly listened,” he said. “He believes I am the worst man in Russia.”

Given that Mr. Fry’s Twitter updates go out to 5.5 million readers, word of the encounter traveled fast. Mr. Fry wrote that he was “rather startled” to find a scrum of journalists wa! iting for! him when he emerged from the interview.

Later Thursday, he was mobbed by dozens of fans at the airport as he left St. Petersburg.

Video of Stephen Fry signing autographs at the airport in St. Petersburg on Thursday.

Mr. Fry’s visit lent rare star power to the battle against anti-gay legislation in Russia, a drive to restrict rights that many Russian celebrities, even tose vehemently opposed to President Vladimir V. Putin, either avoid commenting on or actively support.

While a recent ban on the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans has been a major news story in the United States, and the jailing of members of the protest group Pussy Riot last year garnered broad criticism from Russian celebrities and visiting pop stars, a series of laws against so-called homosexual propaganda have been less controversial in a country where support for same-sex marriage is minimal.

As our colleague David Herszenhorn reported, gay-rights demonstrators were openly attacked in central Moscow outside of Russia’s St! ate Duma ! in January, when a preliminary version of the bill passed with a vote of 388 to 1.

Attackers, some singing religious hymns, hurled eggs and paint at the gay rights advocates, and shouted “Moscow is not Sodom!” In response, gay rights advocates shouted: “Fascism will not pass!” and “Moscow is not Iran!” Skirmishes broke out, and the police arrested about 20 people â€" most them opponents of the bill, who were accused of demonstrating without a permit.

Video recorded by the news site Grani.ru showed the assault on the protesters.

Video of gay-rights protesters being attacked outside the Russian Parliament in Janauary.

Mr. Milonov has firmly placed himself at the vanguard of that movement. The St. Petersburgban, which stipulates a fine of up to $16,000 for “advocating” for homosexuality among minors, matched similar bans in a half-dozen other Russian cities, as well as a law banning gay pride parades in Moscow until the year 2112.

Anton Krasovsky, the former editor-in-chief of a pro-Kremlin television station, was fired in January after he said on air, “I’m gay, and I’m a person just like President Putin.” Mr. Krasovsky was one of many Russians to share images of Mr. Fry meeting Mr. Milonov on Facebook on Thursday, commenting, “And you said it was a fake.” He also expressed regret about not getting to speak with Mr. Fry during his visit.

Perhaps the greatest measure of Mr. Fry’s success came in an evening news segment on the state-controlled NTV station. Billed as a “discussion among men,” Mr. Fry’s meeting with Mr. Milonov had “possibly attracted more attention than a heavyweight championship fight,” a newsreader said.

Reporting was contributed by Michael Schwirtz.



British Comedian Confronts Russian Lawmaker on ‘Gay Propaganda’ Ban

MOSCOW â€" The British comedian and author Stephen Fry brought a sharp tongue and a Twitter following of millions on Thursday when he confronted a Russian lawmaker who drafted the ban on “homosexual propaganda,” in the city of St. Petersburg.

Mr. Fry, who is openly gay, arrived in Russia with a BBC television crew on Tuesday, to conduct interviews for “Out There,” a documentary on homosexuality in various countries.

But many of Mr. Fry’s followers on the social network were confused, stunned even, when he mentioned that he would interiew City Councilman Vitaly Milonov, a fiery conservative best known for spearheading a $10.7 million lawsuit against Madonna for supposedly promoting lesbianism to minors during a concert last August.

Mr. Milonov posted photographs of the two men chatting amicably in his office before the interview on VK, Russia’s answer to Facebook. (The photographs also showed that the councilman’s computer screen was on a Google Image search page reading “KOSOVO IS SERBIA,” hinting at his interest in defending the pan-Slavic Orthodox Christian nation against all assaults.)

A screenshot from the VK.com page of the Russian lawmaker Vitaly Milonov showed him meeting Stephen Fry in his office in St. Petersburg on Thursday.VK.com A screenshot from the VK.com page of the Russian lawmaker Vitaly Milonov showed him meeting Stephen Fry in his office in St. Petersburg on Thursday.

The interview, Mr. Fry reported later on Twitter, was an intense exchange.

Mr. Milonov, for his part, told a St. Petersburg news site, “according to Stephen Fry, Russians are uneducated â€" more specifically, partially educated barbarians.” Still, Mr. Milonov called the frank exchange valuable, since, he said, Mr. Fry is not a diplomat and therefore is more open about voicing “what the British society and the British leadership thinks.”

The councilman also told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that he would pray for Mr. Fry and his family. “It was curious, like touching another civilization. I mostly listened,” he said. “He believes I am the worst man in Russia.”

Given that Mr. Fry’s Twitter updates go out to 5.5 million readers, word of the encounter traveled fast. Mr. Fry wrote that he was “rather startled” to find a scrum of journalists wa! iting for! him when he emerged from the interview.

Later Thursday, he was mobbed by dozens of fans at the airport as he left St. Petersburg.

Video of Stephen Fry signing autographs at the airport in St. Petersburg on Thursday.

Mr. Fry’s visit lent rare star power to the battle against anti-gay legislation in Russia, a drive to restrict rights that many Russian celebrities, even tose vehemently opposed to President Vladimir V. Putin, either avoid commenting on or actively support.

While a recent ban on the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans has been a major news story in the United States, and the jailing of members of the protest group Pussy Riot last year garnered broad criticism from Russian celebrities and visiting pop stars, a series of laws against so-called homosexual propaganda have been less controversial in a country where support for same-sex marriage is minimal.

As our colleague David Herszenhorn reported, gay-rights demonstrators were openly attacked in central Moscow outside of Russia’s St! ate Duma ! in January, when a preliminary version of the bill passed with a vote of 388 to 1.

Attackers, some singing religious hymns, hurled eggs and paint at the gay rights advocates, and shouted “Moscow is not Sodom!” In response, gay rights advocates shouted: “Fascism will not pass!” and “Moscow is not Iran!” Skirmishes broke out, and the police arrested about 20 people â€" most them opponents of the bill, who were accused of demonstrating without a permit.

Video recorded by the news site Grani.ru showed the assault on the protesters.

Video of gay-rights protesters being attacked outside the Russian Parliament in Janauary.

Mr. Milonov has firmly placed himself at the vanguard of that movement. The St. Petersburgban, which stipulates a fine of up to $16,000 for “advocating” for homosexuality among minors, matched similar bans in a half-dozen other Russian cities, as well as a law banning gay pride parades in Moscow until the year 2112.

Anton Krasovsky, the former editor-in-chief of a pro-Kremlin television station, was fired in January after he said on air, “I’m gay, and I’m a person just like President Putin.” Mr. Krasovsky was one of many Russians to share images of Mr. Fry meeting Mr. Milonov on Facebook on Thursday, commenting, “And you said it was a fake.” He also expressed regret about not getting to speak with Mr. Fry during his visit.

Perhaps the greatest measure of Mr. Fry’s success came in an evening news segment on the state-controlled NTV station. Billed as a “discussion among men,” Mr. Fry’s meeting with Mr. Milonov had “possibly attracted more attention than a heavyweight championship fight,” a newsreader said.

Reporting was contributed by Michael Schwirtz.



The End of Google Reader Sends Internet Into an Uproar

Last night, I went to meet a group of friends for dinner in San Francisco after work. As I sat down at the table, two of my dining companions asked in unison, with eye-opening looks on their faces, “Did you hear the news”

“Yes,” I replied as I shuffled my chair in and unfurled my napkin. “They picked a new pope, from Latin America.”

“No, not that,” they responded. “Google is shutting down Google Reader on July 1.” The dinner then turned into a torrent of information about the chaos that had ensued online as a result.

My friends are not the only ones upset by Google’s decision to eliminate Google Reader, the company’s service for viewing blogs through an RSS feed.

People turned to Twitter to lambaste Google for its decision and ask other people for alternative feed readers. Blogs weighed in, noting that the company was making a mistake. A few Web sites that rely on Google Reader for their own products, including FeedDemon, seemed near tears over the decision. And the Hitler meme that usually circulates online during tough times, also appeared with a video about the closing.

Outraged Google Reader fans put together a petition on the Web site Change.org to keep the RSS reader alive, and in a few hours had garnered more than 50,000 signatures.

“It’s still a core part of my Internet use,” wrote Dan Lewis, an avid Google Reader fan, in the petition. â€! œAnd of the many, many others who are signed below. Our confidence in Google’s other products â€" Gmail, YouTube, and yes, even Plus â€" requires that we trust you in respecting how and why we use your other products.”

Some people defended the decision. Dave Winer, one of the people behind the invention of RSS, said good riddance in a blog post on his Web site. But Mr. Winer was an exception as he noted later in the day that his blog post attracted “some pretty sick comments” that he was forced to delete.

Google declined to comment on why it planned to shut down the service, which has been the leading RSS reader for some time. Users seem to be upset that there are few RSS competitors these days, although there are newer types of news-aggregating products like Flipboard and Pulse. One theory is that Google is trying to push customers to Google Plus, its social-networking site, on which users can follow product page for different news outlets.

Now people will be out on the news reader street by July 1, and there are very few places for them to go.

As BuzzFeed noted, using data from the BuzzFeed Network, a group of sites that collectively have over 300 million users, Google Reader still sends a considerable amount of traffic to these sites. Google Plus, the company’s social network, does not.



2 New Accessories Move TiVo Premiere to Another Level

TiVo Goes Wandering, on the Road and at Home

You always remember the days that changed your life forever. Your first kiss. The birth of a child. The day you got a TiVo.

The TiVo Stream, left, which lets users watch on mobile devices, and the TiVo Premiere 4.

I do, anyway. TiVo made me a cultist. “I don’t know or care when a TV show will be broadcast or on what channel,” I’d explain to anyone who would listen. “I just tell the TiVo what show or actor or director I like, and it records shows automatically. I bypass ads with the 30-second skip button. I can watch an hourlong show in 40 minutes!”

Wow, how times have changed. Cable companies can now rent you less polished but far less expensive DVRs. The monthly fee is usually about the same as the TiVo, $15. (You can also pay TiVo a one-time $500.)

People started watching TV over the Internet, too. Most people watch TV the old-fashioned way â€" from cable or satellite â€" but many don’t want to be anchored to the living room. They want to watch from any room in the house, or even out of the house.

The TiVo is still out there ($150 to $400, depending on recording capacity). The latest models, the Premiere family, are smaller and better-looking than old TiVos; the high-end models can record from as many as four channels simultaneously.

But the best news comes from the Department of Better Late Than Never: two new accessories that let you both time-shift and place-shift your TV shows. The TiVo Mini ($100) lets you watch them on another TV in the same house; the TiVo Stream ($130) lets you watch them on an iPhone or iPad, either at home or away.

They both work very well. Each upholds TiVo’s reputation for simplicity and smoothness of operation. Video and audio quality are superb. Amazingly, someone can be using your TiVo even while you’re playing back a different show remotely.

Unfortunately, there’s enough fine print to fill an encyclopedia.

For starters, the setup is much too complicated.

Your TiVo, your Mini and your Stream must all be connected to a wired Ethernet network in your house. (The company says that Wi-Fi isn’t reliable enough to ensure stutter-proof high-definition video.) Depending on your tolerance for stapling new cables along the wall, this requirement could be a big drawback.

A workaround: you can buy Actiontec MoCa adapters ($115 a pair). These little boxes transmit Ethernet signals from your router to coaxial cables (the round cords that bring cable TV into the house). Once you’ve attached a MoCa box to a cable-TV jack in your wall, you can then plug an Ethernet cable or a TiVo Mini into it. Presto: no rewiring.

You have to “activate” each on TiVo’s Web site. You have to permit remote access on the TiVo itself. There’s a 20-minute period of downloading and processing. For the Stream, into each iPhone or iPad, you have to type your Media Access Key: a long string of numbers that’s unique to your TiVo. That’s an antipiracy step, meant to appease the TV networks. But it feels paranoid.

Keep in mind, furthermore, that these new products work only with the TiVo Premiere. The Premiere requires a CableCard; cable boxes and antennas don’t work.

A CableCard looks like a metal credit card, and it replaces the cable box (and its remote control) that used to clutter up your TV area. From now on, you change channels and volume using the TiVo remote control. But exchanging your cable box for a CableCard means a visit to your cable company’s office, or a visit from one of its technicians.

All right. Once all of those setup headaches are complete, how do these things work

The TiVo Mini, which became available just this week, is a 6-inch-square, black, cheap-feeling plastic slab with sloped edges, like a pyramid sawed off close to the base. It’s meant to be a satellite for a TiVo Premiere (4 or XL4 model) you already own; it brings that TiVo’s screen to a second TV.

It comes with the same brilliantly designed TiVo remote control. It offers the same menus on the screen â€" including access to services like Hulu Plus, YouTube, AOL On, Rhapsody, Spotify, Live365, Pandora, PhotoBucket and Google Picasa â€" and makes the same distinctive sounds. But behind the scenes, it’s operating your real TiVo in another room.

What’s it lacking A real TiVo’s access to Netflix and Amazon Instant Video (TiVo says they’re coming soon). It’s also missing the To Do list and Season Pass-management features of the real TiVo. Remember, too, that each Mini monopolizes one of the TiVo’s four tuners, which cuts down the number of shows the TiVo can record simultaneously.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

A version of this article appeared in print on March 14, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: TiVo Goes Wandering, On the Road And at Home.

2 New Accessories Move TiVo Premiere to Another Level

TiVo Goes Wandering, on the Road and at Home

You always remember the days that changed your life forever. Your first kiss. The birth of a child. The day you got a TiVo.

The TiVo Stream, left, which lets users watch on mobile devices, and the TiVo Premiere 4.

I do, anyway. TiVo made me a cultist. “I don’t know or care when a TV show will be broadcast or on what channel,” I’d explain to anyone who would listen. “I just tell the TiVo what show or actor or director I like, and it records shows automatically. I bypass ads with the 30-second skip button. I can watch an hourlong show in 40 minutes!”

Wow, how times have changed. Cable companies can now rent you less polished but far less expensive DVRs. The monthly fee is usually about the same as the TiVo, $15. (You can also pay TiVo a one-time $500.)

People started watching TV over the Internet, too. Most people watch TV the old-fashioned way â€" from cable or satellite â€" but many don’t want to be anchored to the living room. They want to watch from any room in the house, or even out of the house.

The TiVo is still out there ($150 to $400, depending on recording capacity). The latest models, the Premiere family, are smaller and better-looking than old TiVos; the high-end models can record from as many as four channels simultaneously.

But the best news comes from the Department of Better Late Than Never: two new accessories that let you both time-shift and place-shift your TV shows. The TiVo Mini ($100) lets you watch them on another TV in the same house; the TiVo Stream ($130) lets you watch them on an iPhone or iPad, either at home or away.

They both work very well. Each upholds TiVo’s reputation for simplicity and smoothness of operation. Video and audio quality are superb. Amazingly, someone can be using your TiVo even while you’re playing back a different show remotely.

Unfortunately, there’s enough fine print to fill an encyclopedia.

For starters, the setup is much too complicated.

Your TiVo, your Mini and your Stream must all be connected to a wired Ethernet network in your house. (The company says that Wi-Fi isn’t reliable enough to ensure stutter-proof high-definition video.) Depending on your tolerance for stapling new cables along the wall, this requirement could be a big drawback.

A workaround: you can buy Actiontec MoCa adapters ($115 a pair). These little boxes transmit Ethernet signals from your router to coaxial cables (the round cords that bring cable TV into the house). Once you’ve attached a MoCa box to a cable-TV jack in your wall, you can then plug an Ethernet cable or a TiVo Mini into it. Presto: no rewiring.

You have to “activate” each on TiVo’s Web site. You have to permit remote access on the TiVo itself. There’s a 20-minute period of downloading and processing. For the Stream, into each iPhone or iPad, you have to type your Media Access Key: a long string of numbers that’s unique to your TiVo. That’s an antipiracy step, meant to appease the TV networks. But it feels paranoid.

Keep in mind, furthermore, that these new products work only with the TiVo Premiere. The Premiere requires a CableCard; cable boxes and antennas don’t work.

A CableCard looks like a metal credit card, and it replaces the cable box (and its remote control) that used to clutter up your TV area. From now on, you change channels and volume using the TiVo remote control. But exchanging your cable box for a CableCard means a visit to your cable company’s office, or a visit from one of its technicians.

All right. Once all of those setup headaches are complete, how do these things work

The TiVo Mini, which became available just this week, is a 6-inch-square, black, cheap-feeling plastic slab with sloped edges, like a pyramid sawed off close to the base. It’s meant to be a satellite for a TiVo Premiere (4 or XL4 model) you already own; it brings that TiVo’s screen to a second TV.

It comes with the same brilliantly designed TiVo remote control. It offers the same menus on the screen â€" including access to services like Hulu Plus, YouTube, AOL On, Rhapsody, Spotify, Live365, Pandora, PhotoBucket and Google Picasa â€" and makes the same distinctive sounds. But behind the scenes, it’s operating your real TiVo in another room.

What’s it lacking A real TiVo’s access to Netflix and Amazon Instant Video (TiVo says they’re coming soon). It’s also missing the To Do list and Season Pass-management features of the real TiVo. Remember, too, that each Mini monopolizes one of the TiVo’s four tuners, which cuts down the number of shows the TiVo can record simultaneously.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

A version of this article appeared in print on March 14, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: TiVo Goes Wandering, On the Road And at Home.

Daily Report: Google Hastens to Show Concern for Privacy

Google executives are realizing that penalties for privacy breaches, like those it acknowledged involving its Street View project, do matter, if only because of the reputational risks, David Streitfield and Claire Cain Miller report in Thursday’s New York Times.

In the culmination of a two-year investigation into whether its Street View mapping project violated privacy protections, law-enforcement officials told Google this week to shape up. Again.

Google has repeatedly redefined how people communicate and acquire knowledge in the 21st century, and it has repeatedly been accused of breaking the rules in the process. The company says it has taken its mistakes in the case to heart and has already changed. Never again, it says, will a midlevel engineer be able to do anything like what one did in Street View: start a program to scoop up data from potentially millions of unencrypted Wi-Fi networks around the world, without hi bosses knowing.

To make sure of this, a coalition of 38 states has drawn up numerous specific steps for Google to take, ranging from educating its engineers to educating its lawyers. Whatever Google was doing before to improve its privacy controls was not enough, the states say.

Google’s internal compliance will not be directly monitored. But if states feel Google is not upholding its side of the deal, they can bring the matter up to the executive committee that brokered the deal, including the attorneys general of Illinois, Massachusetts and Texas.

Some privacy experts think the program has a fair chance of success. “This gives me some glimmer of hope that going forward, the culture of Google will include more privacy by design,” said Joseph L. Hall, senior staff technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “Then they could do things in an innovative way on the front end that won’t result in needing to beg for forgiveness later.”

Still, it is difficul! t to make changes in an extremely successful technology firm.



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