February 2016 – Page 7 – news.buyenne.com

Indiana bill won’t stop Tesla from selling direct-to-consumers

Amendment to a state bill was removed so a third-part dealer isn’t required.

A Tesla S with autopilot features. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Earlier this week, the Indiana legislature added an amendment to a bill that would have made it illegal for manufacturers to sell cars directly to consumers, a practice that electric vehicle company Tesla employs. But on Thursday that amendment was taken out of the bill, all but assuring Tesla’s continued operation in Indiana for the foreseeable future.

The direct-to-consumer business model has been the basis of Tesla’s operations, but it has rankled other car manufacturers and the dealers they sell through. Dealers, for their part, have fought back in several states like Texas, Arizona, and New Jersey, and over the years they've won legal barriers to keep Tesla from selling cars direct from the manufacturer.

The battle in Indiana was interesting because Tesla was honed in on GM, which recently released an electric vehicle that could be competitive with Tesla's forthcoming Model 3. Tesla accused GM of pushing the bill through the state’s legislature in a letter to its customers shared with Ars. However, Tesla could not provide solid proof of GM’s involvement.

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You wouldn’t be able to pause your video games today without Jerry Lawson

Lawson was a pioneering black engineer back when it was even harder in Silicon Valley.

(credit: The Strong Museum of Play)

You've gotta step away from the crowd and go do your own thing. You find a ground, cover it, it's brand new, you're on your own—you're an explorer. That's about what it's going to be like. Explore new vistas, new avenues, new ways—not relying on everyone else's way to tell you which way to go, and how to go, and what you should be doing.

—Jerry Lawson, from an interview with Vintage Computing and Gaming in 2009

Though you may not know his name, Jerry Lawson helped lay the groundwork for all modern gaming consoles. As chief hardware engineer for Fairchild Semiconductor’s game division in the 1970s, Lawson was largely responsible for the Fairchild Channel F—the first console to include its own microchip and the first to use cartridges.

Lawson was also black. And as this Black History Month winds down, it’s worth reflecting on his achievements because Lawson succeeded in Silicon Valley at a time when opportunities for black engineers and inventors were severely limited (even more so than today). As The New York Times once put it, “He was among only a handful of black engineers in the world of electronics in general and electronic gaming in particular.”

Early days

Jerry Lawson was born on December 1, 1940 and grew up in the Jamaica, Queens area of New York City. His father was a longshoreman who loved to read science books; his mother was passionately committed to ensuring her son received a good public school education. She went so far as to visit schools to interview the principal and teachers. If she didn’t like what she heard, her son was going to a different school.

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FBI Busts Movie Industry Insider for DVD Screener Leaks

A 31-year old man from Lancaster has been arrested following an FBI investigation into several leaked DVD-screeners. The man, who worked in the entertainment industry, pleaded guilty to uploading screener copies of The Revenant and The Peanuts Movie to the private BitTorrent tracker Pass The Popcorn.

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

fbianti Late last December millions of pirates cheered behind their computers as the “screener season” finally got underway.

High quality copies of some of the hottest Hollywood productions appeared online, with some titles even beating their official theatrical release.

The high-profile leaks were put on the radar of the FBI and this week the Justice Department announced that they caught one of the sources, a 31-year old entertainment industry worker.

Kyle Moriarty from Lancaster admitted to copying screeners of The Revenant and The Peanuts Movie, while working on a movie studio lot. Both copies were uploaded to the private BitTorrent tracker Pass The Popcorn (PTP) and found their way to many public sites in the following days.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that Moriarty has signed a plea agreement which was submitted to a District Court last Friday.

“…defendant obtained copies of the copyright-protected films The Revenant and The Peanuts Movie. Each of the films was a “screener,” a disc containing an advance screening copy of a film, which defendant took without authorization while at work,” the agreement reads.

Moriarty copied the films onto a USB drive and took them home. After encoding the releases he uploaded The Revenant screener and The Peanuts Movie to the PTP tracker, with the username “clutchit.”

The Justice Department reports that both movies were downloaded millions of times following their early release, causing significant damage to the copyright holders.

“Over one million people have downloaded from peer-to-peer networks the version of The Revenant that defendant uploaded to the Internet. Fox has suffered losses of at least $1.12 million,” the press release states.

Leaked Revenant screener

therevenant

The plea agreement doesn’t identify Moriarty’s employer but according to The Smoking Gun he worked as a production coordinator for the “Dr. Phil” show, which shoots close to the Paramount studio.

It remains unclear how the FBI identified Moriarty us the uploader, but according to the plea agreement he uploaded the movies from his home address.

The Lancaster man doesn’t appear to be connected to the release group Hive-CM8, which uploaded the bulk of the leaked screeners last December. Hive-CM8 leaked over a dozen screeners but The Revenant and The Peanuts Movie were not among their releases.

In a statement released to the public, U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker applauds the enforcement efforts, stating that the leaks endangered the local entertainment industries.

“As the Academy Awards ceremony this weekend highlights, the entertainment industry is the economic cornerstone of the Central District of California. Therefore, my office is committed to protecting its intellectual property,” Decker notes.

“The defendant’s conduct harmed the very industry that was providing his livelihood as well as the livelihood of others in Southern California,” she adds.

Moriarty is scheduled to be arraigned next month and faces a maximum prison sentence of three years.

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

Hexoskin smart shirt reviewed: Measuring your vitals so you don’t have to

But at $400, jumping on the smart clothing bandwagon is a big investment.

Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

A world where you can slip on a tank top and gym shorts that track all of your workouts is a reality now—but it comes at a steep price. Hexoskin was one of the first companies to put out a range of smart exercise clothing, complete with shirts and tanks for men and women that monitor not just steps and calories but also heart rate, breathing, and more.

But being one of the first means jumping over many hurdles—not just in getting a product right, but also in getting users to buy it. A Hexoskin bundle includes a sensor-laced shirt, "brain pack" with the battery and Bluetooth sensors, and a charging cable costs for $399. That's a lot of money to pay for a garment that's going to get sweat on more often than not, but Hexoskin is hoping the technology underneath the surface will persuade serious gym-goers and athletes to take the plunge.

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That one time a man deliberately crashed at 632mph to pull max Gs

A review of Space Men, on PBS, turns up a new hero in pre-NASA space adventures.

Col. Joseph Kittinger is ready to gooooooooo during Project Excelsior. (credit: National Museum of the US Air Force)

Aside from documentaries by Ken and Ric Burns, my favorite PBS program is American Experience, the invariably well done series that covers slices of US history. So when I heard the network planned to run an episode on "pre-astronauts," people who pushed into the edge of space and tested human physiology in extreme environments before NASA rose to prominence, I was eager to watch.

Space Men premieres Tuesday at 9pm ET on PBS. It chronicles Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior, two initiatives in which explorers rose as high as 102,800 feet in helium-filled balloons to experience the frigid cold and near zero atmospheric pressure of such altitudes. In some ways these missions set the stage for Project Mercury, which would come shortly after, and they're worth remembering for their own sake.

While I was familiar with Project Excelsior and the daring high altitude jumps made by Col. Joseph Kittinger, I admit I never heard the name John Paul Stapp, who entered the Army Air Corps as a physician in 1944. He really stands out in this episode as an out-of-his-time man who foresaw that one day humans would fly into space.

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WhatsApp pulls the plug on BlackBerry, Symbian, Android 2.2 apps

Facebook-owned chat app WhatsApp is used by as many as a billion people. But a small number of those people might have to look for other solutions later this year, because WhatsApp has announced it’s ending support for a few platforms. The news probably says more about the tiny amount of market share held by those […]

WhatsApp pulls the plug on BlackBerry, Symbian, Android 2.2 apps is a post from: Liliputing

Geoblocking: Netflix blockiert auch VPNs in Deutschland

Leser berichten, dass sie nicht mehr auf das US-Angebot von Netflix zugreifen können. Seit Januar war das Geoblocking angekündigt worden. (Netflix, Server)

Slysoft: Insider halten Comeback von AnyDVD für möglich

Das Ausbleiben der Updates für AnyDVD HD könnte die Umgehung des Geoblockings der Filmindustrie zurückwerfen. Doch es könnte auch irgendwie weitergehen mit der Ripper-Software. (Urheberrecht, Rechtsstreitigkeiten)

YTS / YIFY Has a Company in the UK & It’s About to Close Down

YTS was one of the world’s most popular torrent sites until it was shut down by the MPAA last year. However, at least on paper the site might still exist since it is owned by a company registered in the UK. Soon though, YTS (RE) Limited will disappear for good after its sole director filed a request with the government to close it down.

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

If one had to create a list of the most influential torrent sites of the last decade, YTS/YIFY would certainly be among the top 10.

After arriving on the scene in 2010 the group shared more than 6,000 releases, on the way making YIFY one of the most recognizable piracy brands in the history of file-sharing.

Responsible both directly and indirectly for the sharing of countless millions of movies by millions of devoted fans, YTS/YIFY was bound to attract negative attention from the powerful businessmen of Hollywood. And, sure enough, in October 2015 the site disappeared, leaving only speculation in its wake.

Soon, however, the fog began to clear. Early November the MPAA confirmed it had shut down the operation, with its alleged New Zealand-based mastermind facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

Somewhat surprisingly the dispute with the site’s owner was quickly handled after he reached a private settlement deal with the studios. The terms have never been made public but several months on there are some interesting loose ends to tie up 11,600 miles away in the UK.

This may come as a surprise, but YTS/YIFY wasn’t just a website domain carrying torrents for DVD rips. It was in fact a fully registered company in the United Kingdom. On February 5, 2015, YTS (RE) Limited was incorporated under the company number 09424588.

The company’s address in the UK is 20-22, Wenlock Road, London, but searching there for a torrent site would prove somewhat pointless. That location is a so-called ‘virtual office‘ that offers customers a London presence for a small fee, along with mail forwarding, telephone answering and fax forwarding services if required.

Born in 1994, the sole director of YTS (RE) Ltd is listed as a New Zealand national holding the somewhat predictable status of “programmer”. Presumably ‘torrent site operator’ would be a little too obvious, even if the company name gives things away somewhat.

Last Tuesday the Registrar of Companies filed its response to the official shut down request, confirming the closure of YTS (RE) Ltd in two months’ time barring any complications.

If the company has any assets at all one might assume they will have already been handed to the MPAA as part of the YTS settlement, as the site’s YTS.to domain already has. However, if anything is left over the ownership of those items will transfer to the state.

In line with tradition the application for strike off has already been published in The London Gazette (pdf), which to our knowledge marks the first time that a torrent site has appeared in the journal since it was first published in 1665.

Interestingly, YTS isn’t the only torrent site with roots in a UK company. EZCloud Ltd is listed in the site’s WHOIS details as the owner of torrent site EZTV.ag.

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

Kazuo Hirai: Sony sieht keine großen Innovationen mehr bei Smartphones

Bei Smartphones seien keine großen Innovationen mehr möglich, meint Sony-Chef Kazuo Hirai. Die Erfahrung lehre, dass eine Produktkategorie, die heute den Markt dominiere, nicht für ewig bleibe. Auch bei tragbarer Elektronik gebe es noch nicht Revolutionäres. (Smartphone, Sony)