February 2016 – Page 135 – news.buyenne.com

Make your own cyborg cockroach for under $30

Warning: this DIY hack requires surgery. And an Arduino.

Every few years, cockroaches find themselves conscripted into humanity’s ongoing endeavours to build proper cyborgs. And this example from Instructables may be the cheapest venture yet. A user calling themselves bravoechonovember1 recently released guidelines on how to control a roach with an Arduino for under £30, a figure that does not doesn’t appear to include the cost of acquiring said insects first.

Nitpicking aside, the process itself seems relatively simple, if rather gruesome. The first step is to assemble a “backpack,” which consists of sheet aluminium cut into a rectangular shape, pin connectors, and wires. Then comes the actual surgical procedure.

You’ll need to anaesthetise your cockroach by submerging it into ice water before sanding down the top of its thorax (the bit between its neck and abdomen), attaching your Arduino, and trimming the antennae so you can insert wires into the hollows. Finally, and perhaps most disconcertingly, you’ll have to insert another wire into the creature’s thorax, by means of first creating a perforation with a pin. Ouch.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Athlon X4 845: AMD veröffentlicht Carrizo für Sockel FM2+

Der erste Carrizo für Desktop-Rechner: AMDs neuer Athlon X4 845 ist ein Prozessor mit Excavator-Technik für den Sockel FM2+. Obendrein gibt’s zwei weitere Kaveri-Chips mit integrierter Grafikeinheit. (Carrizo, Prozessor)

Der erste Carrizo für Desktop-Rechner: AMDs neuer Athlon X4 845 ist ein Prozessor mit Excavator-Technik für den Sockel FM2+. Obendrein gibt's zwei weitere Kaveri-Chips mit integrierter Grafikeinheit. (Carrizo, Prozessor)

Path of War: Strategischer Feldzug durch die USA

Das Entwicklerteam hinter Titeln wie Spellforce, Battleforge und C&C Tiberium Alliances wagt einen neuen Anlauf: Im Mobilegame Path of War will es die USA erobern – und die Smartphones von Strategiespielern. (Strategiespiel, Command & Conquer)

Das Entwicklerteam hinter Titeln wie Spellforce, Battleforge und C&C Tiberium Alliances wagt einen neuen Anlauf: Im Mobilegame Path of War will es die USA erobern - und die Smartphones von Strategiespielern. (Strategiespiel, Command & Conquer)

Safe Harbor: EU-Kommission verweist auf schwierige Gespräche mit USA

Eine Einigung über das umstrittene Safe-Harbor-Abkommen zum Stichtag 31. Januar hat die EU-Kommission verfehlt. Es sei nicht leicht, den EU-Bürgern einen angemessenen Schutz ihrer Daten in den USA zu garantieren, sagte nun die Justizkommissarin. (Safe Harbor, Google)

XCOM 2 review: Best-in-class tactical battles with a new sense of style

Sequel greatly improves on character and setting without ruining the gameplay.

The design on the new alien creatures is impressive.

Corporal Alessandra Cancellara is heading into a mission on the Skyranger when I notice her. Most of my squaddies are present, looking cool, as the music theoretically pumps both them and me up. But Alessandra, suited up in green with needles holding up her ash-colored bun, stands out. She’s practically dancing in her seat, a bundle of nervous energy and quick grins. I’d probably look like that heading into a massively tense battle zone, so it suddenly hits me: XCOM 2 has managed to find an emotional core.

The first of the rebooted XCOMs, 2012’s Enemy Unknown, was a fantastic strategy game. So was its expansion, Enemy Within. Yet if there was an immediate criticism to be made of both games, it was that they were stylistically... well, dull. The near-future X-Files-like alien invasion storyline only allowed for the most generic science fiction, and the game structure never felt fully committed beyond “well, this is how the 1994 X-COM did it.” In that light, XCOM 2 having a distinct sense of style is a tremendously positive sign.

That sense of style manages to weave itself through the entire game, making XCOM 2 a notable improvement over its predecessor at nearly every conceptual level—but the game does miss the opportunity to make structural improvements.

Read 25 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Xperia M5: Sonys neues Smartphone kommt mit hochauflösenden Kameras

Mit dem Xperia M5 bringt Sony ein neues Smartphone im oberen Mittelklassebereich nach Deutschland: Das Gerät kommt mit 5-Zoll-Display, Helio-X10-Prozessor und zwei hochauflösenden Kameras. Kosten soll das Smartphone 400 Euro. (Sony, Smartphone)

Open Source: NayuOS für Chromebooks verzichtet auf Google-Anbindung

Das Open-Source-Unternehmen Nexedi hat mit NayuOS einen Fork von Chromium OS entwickelt, der Wert auf Erweiterbarkeit, Sicherheit und den Schutz der Privatsphäre legt. (Chromebook, Google)

Redflex: We know Australian authorities are investigating dirty Chicago deal

Australian Federal Police scrutinizing decade-long period in Redflex’s recent history.

(credit: Intel Free Press)

Things keep getting worse for Redflex, the embattled Australian red-light camera vendor.

On Monday, the company told its investors that it is “aware” that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has begun an investigation into its activities related to the former botched contract with the City of Chicago.

As Redflex wrote in its brief statement:

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Torrent Tracker Knocked Offline by ‘Faulty’ Takedown Requests

An Indian film production company is overloading hosting companies with takedown notices, asking the providers to take down some of the largest torrent trackers in the world. While the notices are not the most accurate, they have already led to a temporary disconnection of a large public tracker.

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

At any given point in time, millions of people are sharing files via BitTorrent, transfers that are often coordinated by external torrent trackers.

Technically speaking a standalone tracker is similar to a DNS provider, it’s a ‘phone book’ which points people to content without knowing what it is.

The trackers themselves don’t host any files nor do they have a searchable index. However, that doesn’t mean that copyright holders will leave them alone.

Increasingly, trackers are asked to block infringing hashes from their service, which several do. This group includes the popular “Trackerfix” tracker. However, despite honoring removal requests the service got into trouble a few days ago.

The problems started with a wave of takedown requests sent by the Indian film production company Thirrupathi Brothers, which owns the rights to the Tamil movie Rajini Murugan.

The film company is not happy with a torrent being shared on the torrent site LimeTorrents so in order to stop it from being distributed Thirrupathi Brothers targeted a wide range of external trackers.

In a series of takedown notices sent to a variety of trackers’ internet services including CloudFlare, OVH, Private Layer, Plus Server, Velia, Host Europe, Godaddy and NetSAAP it demands an immediate shutdown of the infringing activity.

As a result of the series of requests, the Trackerfix tracker suffered several hours of downtime.

Part of the takedown notice

TorrentFreak spoke with the operator of the popular Trackerfix tracker who is fed up with the whole situation. Even though they had already blocked the hash from their service, the threatening language resulted in their hosting company pulling the plug.

The downtime lasted a few hours but was eventually resolved. What’s most problematic, according to the tracker operator, is that the notice itself is inaccurate and overbroad.

The email indeed appears to be missing parts and is confusing, to say the least. For one, it requests the takedown of several third-party torrent trackers for one infringing hash, out of the millions they track.

This is similar to requesting a DNS server to be taken down because it points people to The Pirate Bay.

“These torrents, videos, URL links are fraudulent/infringing material of the Tamil movie Rajini Murugan. The movie is illegally released around the web… want to stop fraudulent materials on web. The pirated videos are used your bittorrent tracker service for torrent fraudulent material transmission,” the broken English email reads.

In addition, the takedown notice references a combination of Dutch and U.S. regulations, even though several of the targeted companies are located outside of this jurisdiction.

“This letter is official notification under the Foundation for Internet Domain Registration in the Netherlands (SIDN) Dutch Copyright Act, protection of authors’ rights […] and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers.”

At the time of writing the Trackerfix service is back online but the owner fears that he may have to search for a new hosting company if the takedown demands continue.

It’s not clear whether any of the other torrent trackers mentioned in the takedown requests were also pulled offline, but according to Trackerfix it’s certainly not getting easier to operate a torrent tracker.

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

Künstliche Intelligenz: Alpha Go spielt wie ein Japaner

Weltklasse ist Alpha Go noch nicht, aber den Europameister hat das Programm schon besiegt. Die Bewertung der Spiele zeigt: Googles künstliche Intelligenz spielt das komplexe Brettspiel wie ein fähiger Mensch – allerdings ein ziemlich unkreativer. (KI, Google)

Weltklasse ist Alpha Go noch nicht, aber den Europameister hat das Programm schon besiegt. Die Bewertung der Spiele zeigt: Googles künstliche Intelligenz spielt das komplexe Brettspiel wie ein fähiger Mensch - allerdings ein ziemlich unkreativer. (KI, Google)