Month: December 2015

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Oculus' latest Touch controller image doesn't look much different than the model we tried out in June. (credit: Oculus)

Want to simulate waving your hands around in virtual space? 2016 should be a very good year for you, with burgeoning VR hardware makers HTC, Oculus, and Sony all gearing up to launch motion-tracked VR options by way of handheld controllers. However, in the case of Oculus, their offering received a delay on Thursday, just before this year's New Year's Eve ball drop.

The Oculus Touch system, which will add two handheld controllers and an additional motion-tracking camera to the upcoming Oculus VR headset, will now launch in "the second half of 2016," according to an official announcement. This news pushes back the controllers' originally announced—and equally vague—window of 2016's "first half."

Oculus' announcement says the delay will enable "advances in ergonomics" and "improved hand-pose recognition." Ars got the chance to try out an early Touch controller demo in June, which showed off the system's ability to notice whether our fingers within the controller were extended or clenched, enabling poses such as fists and finger points, but the recognition did feel somewhat wonky in the system's early state.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

How time flies. Just over a year ago The Pirate Bay was going through some of the most turbulent times in its entire history.

Following a raid at a Swedish datacenter the site stayed offline for several weeks, an event that fueled the rise of endless ‘replacement’ sites.

While many of the sites stepping up to fill the gap left by The Pirate Bay looked like the real deal, many were simply incomplete copies. To their credit, the operators of some of these sites were upfront about their status but others did everything they could to claim their place as the real Pirate Bay reincarnated.

Of course, when the real Pirate Bay returned at the end of January 2015, many of these other sites questioned their place in the market. Were they needed anymore? Were they even wanted? As time pressed on many simply dissolved but others carried on either as a clone, proxy or mirror.

While this kind of behavior had previously been encouraged by the operators of The Pirate Bay, it ended up causing huge confusion among casual users who had no idea which domains to trust. As previously highlighted, it contributed to a growing branding crisis among ‘pirate’ sites.

However, after returning to its full glory in February 2015, The Pirate Bay put faith in its trusted ThePirateBay.se domain and watched its users do the same. But by May the site was in trouble again when the Stockholm District Court ordered that domain to be seized, pending an appeal.

In response TPB moved to a ‘hydra’ of new domains including .GS, .LA, .VG, .AM, .MN and .GD TLDs but during the months that followed problems began to eat away at them. This week came the icing on the cake when the site’s registrar disabled a batch of active domains.

While it’s possible that the issues with these domains may be solved at some point in the future, The Pirate Bay needed to do something quickly to keep the show on the road. As a result the site is now mainly using its .SE and .ORG domains. The irony here is that these have worked all along and it was only the fear of losing them that prompted all the domain hopping in the first place.

So where is The Pirate Bay today and how does one identify it among all the clones, mirrors and proxies? Verified Pirate Bay domains that can be trusted to link to the real version of the site are shown below.

Most domains should already look familiar but for now it seems likely that of the standard domains ThePirateBay.SE will remain most stable and least likely to be taken down on short notice. ThePirateBay.org has had its own problems recently but they appear to be over, at least for now.

The TOR/Onion address uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion should also be fine longer term but it’s hardly the most memorable set of digits for anyone to recall.

While still operational, ThePirateBay.LA currently seems most vulnerable after being given ‘clienthold‘ status earlier in the week.

In addition to those listed above the TPB crew have many other domains held in backup which could be introduced should any key domains experience further issues. Most do not currently link or divert to The Pirate Bay so there’s little point in listing them right now.

Overall it’s been a turbulent 12 months for The Pirate Bay and there’s little to suggest that 2016 will be any easier. While hosting has been surprisingly stable in recent times at a bare minimum one should expect more domain issues. But as history as shown us, other surprises could be just around the corner.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Hacker group fail0verflow recently showed off a PlayStation 4 running Linux at the Console Hacking 2015 conference, marking the first time someone has managed to install a full-blown, desktop operating system on the game console. Although others have tinkered with the PS4 in the past, including a Brazilian hacker group that used a Raspberry Pi to break […]

PlayStation 4 hacked to run Linux is a post from: Liliputing

3d render of DNA spirals.

CRISPR, a genome-editing technology that has been progressing rapidly in the last three years, has just been named Science’s Breakthrough of the Year. CRISPR is a futuristic technique that can be used to edit and manipulate the DNA of any organism—crops, livestock, and even humans. It can allow scientists to control gene expression and selectively turn genes on or off.

In 2015, two significant advances contributed to CRISPR’s status as this year’s Breakthrough technique. The first was the engineering of a “gene drive” in insects that could benefit human health by eliminating pests and the diseases they carry. The second was gene editing performed in human embryos, a process that sounds like something out of a science fiction novel and raises a host of legal and ethical questions about the manipulation of human DNA to create customized offspring.

CRISPR is not only remarkable for its ability to manipulate the DNA of a targeted organism, it is also remarkable because it is an extremely inexpensive and relatively easy technique to use. In terms of the resources it requires, it could be implemented in almost any microbiology lab worldwide.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

(credit: Gage Skidmore)

Today, the first Snowden disclosures in 2013 feel like a distant memory. The public perception of surveillance has changed dramatically since and, likewise, the battle to shape the legality and logistics of such snooping is continually evolving.

To us, 2015 appeared to be the year where major change would happen whether pro- or anti-surveillance. Experts felt a shift was equally imminent. "I think it's impossible to tell which case will be the one that does it, but I believe that, ultimately, the Supreme Court will have to step in and decide the constitutionality of some of the NSA's practices," Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars last year.

The presumed movement would all start with a lawsuit filed by veteran conservative activist Larry Klayman. Filed the day after the initial Snowden disclosures, his lawsuit would essentially put a stop to unchecked NSA surveillance. In January 2015, he remained the only plaintiff whose case had won when fighting for privacy against the newly understood government monitoring. (Of course, it was a victory in name only—the judicial order in Klayman was stayed pending the government’s appeal at the time).

Read 34 remaining paragraphs | Comments

During December, all self-respecting search engines produce an overview of the most popular search terms of the past year.

These lists give insight into recent trends, and in 2015 Lamar Odom, Paris and American Sniper were among the top trending searches on Google.

But what about torrent search engines? With billions of searches every year it’s worth taking a look at the most-entered keywords on the dominant file-sharing network.

A few years ago we started the ‘Pirate zeitgeist’ tradition with help from one of the largest torrent sites around. Based on a sample of hundreds of millions of searches, this list should give a decent overview of what people are looking for.

2015’s number one query is the same as last year’s, YIFY the name of the popular movie release group which was forced to shut down in October after a legal threat. This means that its popularity is expected to fade in the new year.

In second place we find NeZu, another popular movie release group that made it into the top 50 for the second year. Interestingly, NeZu’s releases are not wildly popular, which might suggest that this high ranking may have been boosted somehow.

The term 2015, often used to find recent movies, comes in third place, followed by Hindi. Other movie related terms such as 1080p, YIFY 720p and YIFY 1080p show that users are increasingly looking for high quality video.

The first content related search query is Game of Thrones in seventh place. Other popular TV searches are The Walking Dead and The Big Bang Theory taking 10th and 16th place respectively.

Movies also remain popular with Star Wars in 27th, Fifty Shades of Grey in 29th and Interstellar in 32nd place. Perhaps surprisingly, there are no searches related to music titles in the top 50. The only music related terms are Discography in 11th place and Flac in 26th.

Finally, various regional searches also remain popular, as they are often used to find localized releases. The terms Hindi, French, Tamil, Telugu, Ita and NL all have a spot in the top 20.

Below is the full list of the 50 most-entered search queries on one of the most popular torrent sites on the Internet.

—

1. yify
2. nezu
3. 2015
4. hindi
5. 1080p
6. yify 720p
7. game of thrones
8. yify 1080p
9. ripsalot
10. the walking dead
11. 3d
12. french
13. discography
14. tamil
15. 2014
16. the big bang theory
17. telugu
18. ita
19. hindi 2015
20. nl
21. malayalam
22. android
23. the flash
24. movies
25. arrow
26. flac
27. star wars
28. the blacklist
29. fifty shades of grey
30. gotham
31. walking dead
32. interstellar
33. batman
34. mac
35. insurgent
36. wwe
37. telugu 2015
38. mad max
39. fast and furious 7
40. jurassic world
41. avengers
42. sword coast legend
43. american sniper
44. gta v
45. dual audio hindi
46. vikings
47. lynda
48. apk
49. avengers age of ultron
50. ettv

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Chuwi is developing a new tablet with a 12 inch, 2160 x 1440 pixel display, an Intel Cherry Trail processor and 4GB of RAM. The Chuwi Hi12 should be available in January. The tablet is powered by an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 processor, but while the Chuwi Hi12 uses Intel’s cheapest, lowest-power Cherry Trail processor, the rest of the […]

Chuwi Hi12 dual OS tablet with a 1440p screen coming soon is a post from: Liliputing

Rosetta's lander, Philae, is imaged shortly following its deployment in November 2014. Philae became the first-ever spacecraft to soft-land upon a comet's surface. (credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)

In November 2014, a strange-looking little spider of a spacecraft caught the world's attention. It may have been one of the oddest-looking pioneers of all time, resembling a mini-refrigerator attached to an insect's legs. The spacecraft, christened Philae, electrified both die-hard space fans and casual observers despite its alien appearance. It made the first-ever soft landing on the face of a comet.

Philae actually made soft landings, as it “bounced” twice on the comet's surface after its landing harpoons did not deploy as planned. Eventually it settled down in its final resting spot, a craggy, dark region called Abydos. Here it delivered another surprise when it “reawakened” seven months after a lack of solar power put it into hibernation.

For some, one of the largest surprises was the identity of people who built Philae and the Rosetta orbiter that delivered it to the comet. While those casually in touch with space news focused on the mission's dramatic twists and turns, dedicated space-watchers recognized it as a historic mission for one oft-overlooked group—the European Space Agency (ESA).

Read 32 remaining paragraphs | Comments