Month: April 2016

From zero to 100mph in 1.2 seconds, the SuperDraco thruster delivers

Ars takes a closer look at SpaceX’s innovative and essential engine.

In this conceptual image, eight SuperDraco thrusters fire as a Dragon spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere at supersonic speeds. (credit: SpaceX)

This week SpaceX announced plans to land a Dragon spacecraft on Mars by 2018. This would be a monumental achievement for NASA or any other national space agency, let alone a single company, considering the 6,000kg Dragon is nearly an order of magnitude more massive than anything previously landed on the red planet.

With the long-term goal of Mars colonization squarely in its crosshair, SpaceX has been testing key technologies needed to land on Mars for years. One of them is supersonic retro-propulsion, which Ars revealed has been tested on upgraded Falcon 9 rockets since September 2013. Supersonic retro-propulsion proved a resounding success.

But the Falcon 9 and its Merlin engines won't be going to Mars. SpaceX will use a different type of propulsion, the SuperDraco thruster, to propulsively land on the red planet. Here's how the landing will work: as the Dragon (dubbed Red Dragon) begins its descent to Mars at supersonic speeds, the spacecraft will fire eight of these thrusters into this onrushing atmosphere.

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Hulu Tracks Pirates to Decide What to Buy

With millions of paying subscribers in the United States, Hulu is one of the leading video streaming services. The company is battling with other services to license the best content, and as part of this quest it uses piracy data to see what is popular among potential viewers.

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

huluWhen major movie and TV companies discuss piracy they often mention the massive losses incurred as a result of unauthorized downloads and streams.

However, this unofficial market also offers a valuable pool of publicly available data on the media consumption habits of a relatively young generation.

Many believe that piracy is in part a market signal showing rightsholders what consumers want. This makes piracy statistics key business intelligence, which many large companies already actively use.

Netflix, for example, uses piracy to figure out how much they can charge in a country, as well as what content they license. They are not alone.

A few days ago we learned that Hulu does the same. Hulu’s head of content acquisitions Lisa Holme told Business Insider that piracy data is an important factor in deciding what content the company licenses.

Pirates can show what TV-shows or movies people are interested in and if they go through the ‘trouble’ of downloading something illegally, it is bound to do well on legitimate platforms as well.

According to Holme, piracy effectively tells Hulu how committed people are to a show. “They are passionate enough about it to break the law,” she says, adding that many would pay to stream content if there’s an easy way.

Piracy tracking and intelligence firm MUSO is one of the players that offers this type of data to copyright holders. While they don’t work with Hulu, the company says that it’s more common nowadays to use piracy as input.

“Piracy data analytics really are a window into the size of global piracy audiences, as well as their behavior around piracy. If you put that data together with regional focus, piracy suddenly isn’t black and white, but has multiple shades,” MUSO’s Chief Commercial Officer Christopher Elkins says.

This type of data can often reveal important geographical trends. And aside from using in for anti-piracy means, the same analytics can be used to make content acquisition decisions.

“Rights owners are starting to use piracy insights effectively to help support their digital strategy, and we’re seeing huge benefit now across the TV and live broadcast industry in particular, which has such geographic-specific rights.”

Ultimately, this should be a win-win for all parties involved. Media companies and copyright holders have a better grip on their audience, and pirates get more legal options of their liking.

“For us, it’s incredibly encouraging to see the creative ways the content industry are using data to ultimately serve a better experience for audiences,” Elkins

TorrentFreak reached out to Hulu for some additional insights about their use of piracy data, but unfortunately the company did not reply. Piracy can come in handy at times, but talking about it apparently still isn’t always convenient.

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

The leap second: Because our clocks are more accurate than the Earth

The Earth’s lurches are erratic, so we don’t even know when the next one is needed.

(credit: Toni Verdú Carbó)

We've recently been treated to that extra day in February that reminds us that 2016 is a leap year. Introduced by Julius Caesar, the leap day is necessary because the orbital year is not exactly equal to the 365 days of our calendar year. Without the adjustment, this year’s spring-like Christmas would eventually become routine even without climate change. After a few more generations, the snows of July would give way again to sweltering afternoons. Given enough time, the seasons would march across the calendar.

In order for the months to retain their traditional characters, the leap day is inserted every four years (with some exceptions). It keeps the calendar in sync with our expectations for the seasons.

But throwing an occasional day at the problem isn't enough. Just as a watch requires periodic adjustments to keep it in agreement with the real time, we need to make occasional tweaks to our global watch. But what is this global watch, and what is the “real” time that it needs to agree with?

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Bring an “escape room” into your living room… for $22

“Escape the Room” is a family-friendly collection of mini-puzzles.

(credit: Thinkfun)

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage right here—and let us know what you think.

Who knew being locked in a room would become so popular?

"Escape rooms" are so hot that even my sleepy Chicago suburb has one. Just plop down 30 bucks, and you too can be locked for an hour inside a foam-stone medieval "dungeon" located right next to a butcher shop. Each group of ten guests has to find a way out of the room before the hour expires. This generally involves solving cooperative puzzles, parsing clues, figuring out a mystery, and popping open a giant lock.

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Knowledge of climate change basics doesn’t make people care

Knowledge of climate change consequences correlates with concern in some countries.

Improving the public's understanding of anthropogenic climate change is vital to cultivating the political will to do something about it. However, a lot of research has shown that simply improving people’s understanding won’t necessarily do much to change their stance. This is because people’s opinions on many topics rest largely on their political affiliation, rather than how well they understand the science.

That leaves us with a thorny state of affairs. If improving science education isn’t going to shift public opinion, what can? A recent paper in Nature Climate Change suggests that education might not be as hopeless a cause as previously thought—but the work has some important limitations that may not give us much cause for optimism.

A problem with previous research on the topic is that “knowledge about climate change” was treated as a monolith, the authors of the new paper argue. Past studies didn't take into account that there are different kinds of knowledge about climate change. While knowledge in one area might be influenced by ideology, knowledge in other areas might not be.

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Hitman: Patch behindert Spielstart im Direct3D-12-Modus

Parallel zur Sapienza-Episode wurde Hitman kaputt gepatcht: Bei vielen Spielern startet der Titel im D3D12-Modus nicht mehr. Zudem gibt es immer noch Probleme mit der Videospeicherverwaltung. (Hitman, Steam)

Parallel zur Sapienza-Episode wurde Hitman kaputt gepatcht: Bei vielen Spielern startet der Titel im D3D12-Modus nicht mehr. Zudem gibt es immer noch Probleme mit der Videospeicherverwaltung. (Hitman, Steam)

Peter Molyneux: Lionhead-Studio ist Geschichte

Eine Dekade mit und ohne Peter Molyneux: Microsoft hat das Lionhead-Studio geschlossen. Durch Black & White bekannt geworden, wurde zuletzt Fable Legends noch in der Alpha-Phase eingestellt. (Peter Molyneux, Fable)

Eine Dekade mit und ohne Peter Molyneux: Microsoft hat das Lionhead-Studio geschlossen. Durch Black & White bekannt geworden, wurde zuletzt Fable Legends noch in der Alpha-Phase eingestellt. (Peter Molyneux, Fable)

Deskmini: Asrock zeigt Rechner mit Intels Mini-STX-Formfaktor

Früher 5×5, heute Mini-STX: In Asrocks Deskmini genanntem System steckt ein extrem kleines Mainboard mit gesockeltem Skylake-Chip. Es soll daher einer der schnellsten Mini-PCs am Markt sein. (Mini-PC, Core i7)

Früher 5x5, heute Mini-STX: In Asrocks Deskmini genanntem System steckt ein extrem kleines Mainboard mit gesockeltem Skylake-Chip. Es soll daher einer der schnellsten Mini-PCs am Markt sein. (Mini-PC, Core i7)

Portugal Blocks 330 Pirate Sites in Just Six Months

After the signing of a memorandum of understanding between rightsholders and ISPs last summer, Portugal is already a pirate site block world leader. In a matter of months the country has blocked an astonishing 330 sites, a number that will increase in the months to come.

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

One of copyright holders’ most-favored anti-piracy mechanisms in place today involves site-blocking. Censoring sites at the ISP level is effective, rightsholders insist, not to mention cheaper than direct legal action against pirate sites.

In most countries where site-blocking is already in place, authorities have previously determined that the legal system must be involved. In the UK, for example, existing legislation was deemed to offer rightsholders the tools they need. Australia, on the other hand, decided to introduce legal amendments to keep things on the straight and narrow.

Portugal decided to take a different approach, one that simply involved an agreement between rightsholders, ISPs and the government. Now, if a site is considered to be illegal by these parties, it can be blocked without stepping into a courtroom.

For copyright holders it’s the Holy Grail and they’re taking full advantage of the new system. This week during a conference in the capital, Lisbon, the Portuguese Association for the Protection of Audiovisual Works revealed the extent of the program and it’s as critics feared.

Executive Director Antonio Paulo Santos reported that Portugal is now blocking a vast range of file-sharing and related sites, offering movies, TV, shows and music to streaming sports and books. In total more than 330 sites are now being blocked by local Internet service providers.

The rate of blocking is unprecedented. In October 2015 more than 50 sites were blocked by ISPs, including KickassTorrents, ExtraTorrent, Isohunt and RARBG. The following month another 40 were added, including BitSnoop, YourBitorrent, SeedPeer, Torlock and Torrentfunk.

Since then another 240 sites have been quietly added to the list. This rapid growth means that along with the United Kingdom and Italy, Portugal is already a world leader in pirate site blockades. All this has been achieved without ever going near a court room.

It is this kind of voluntary agreement that Hollywood and the major record labels are pushing for internationally, whether they’re with Internet service providers, domain registries or companies such as PayPal, Visa and Mastercard. The process in Portugal ticks all the right boxes for the entertainment companies so expect it to be championed elsewhere.

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

Die Woche im Video: Schneller, höher, weiter

Schnelle Leitungen, schnellere Raumschiffe und rasant wachsende Konzerne: Wir haben uns diese Woche das Microtrenching-Pilotprojekt angesehen, uns mit Ionen-Antrieben beschäftigt und über die Quartalszahlen von Apple und Facebook den Kopf geschüttelt. Sieben Tage und viele Meldungen im Überblick. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Malware)

Schnelle Leitungen, schnellere Raumschiffe und rasant wachsende Konzerne: Wir haben uns diese Woche das Microtrenching-Pilotprojekt angesehen, uns mit Ionen-Antrieben beschäftigt und über die Quartalszahlen von Apple und Facebook den Kopf geschüttelt. Sieben Tage und viele Meldungen im Überblick. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Malware)