September 2016 – Page 89 – news.buyenne.com

‘Will Trump Shut Down The Pirate Bay?’

Apparently, there’s a rumor circulating that The Pirate Bay might shut down soon. Various news sites have been speculating about the demise of the popular torrent site and what may happen next… Could Donald Trump be the one to pull the trigger?

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

trumpd No, Trump personally can’t and won’t shut down The Pirate Bay. Period.

Excuse me for the clickbait title and the strange intro, but since it’s the topic of this opinion piece, I thought it was warranted.

Here’s what’s going on.

The torrent community is in turmoil after the shutdowns of KAT and Torrentz. We’ve written about this extensively, but there’s a rather frustrating side-effect that we haven’t discussed so far.

For some reason there’s a slew of news sites, prominently featured in search engines and on social media, that keep spreading fear and panic about a looming Pirate Bay shutdown.

These publications take every piece of file-sharing related news, often sourced from TorrentFreak, and rewrite it in a way that suggests the world’s number one torrent site may disappear, or is already gone.

Here are just a few headlines I’ve seen over the past few days. Click on the links at your own risk.

link

Pirate Bay to Shut Down…

mobileapps

link

These reports have absolutely nothing to do with an apparent Pirate Bay shutdown of course.

The last one, for example, bizarrely connects concerns the RIAA has about access to digital works at the Library of Congress, to the potential demise of TPB, which is pure nonsense.

Pirate Bay Declared Dead

isportsnonsense

Many other articles follow the same format, writing nonsensical trash such as the following:

“Other torrent sites such as TorrentFreak is not happy with the growing population of The Pirate Bay but they do appreciate the role that TPB is playing in the world of torrent sites.”

The quote above comes from The Parent Herald, which also suggests that copyright trolls plan to fine The Pirate Bay. Clearly, they have not read the TorrentFreak article on the topic, which they’re quoting, or they simply don’t understand it.

Might Shut Down Soon?

patentherald

So why are these “news” sites reporting this type of doom and gloom? The short answer is ad views. The clickbait articles are shared on social media, appear in Google news and in search results.

The latter can bring in thousands of views. If people Google for “The Pirate Bay,” these headlines are featured as “news” and beg to be clicked on, generating revenue for the sites in question. For the very same reason you’ll see numerous articles about KAT and Torrentz alternatives.

Click, Click, Click

tpbnews

Why are we complaining about this? Well, these news reports are picked up by other sites and shared among thousands of people. At TorrentFreak we do our best to report news as accurately as possible, and these clickbait articles go directly against this, often using our name.

We have addressed the clickbait issue in the past but in recent months it has gotten much worse.

While there are many different sites guilty of this practice, we recently stumbled upon a ring of related publications that all belong to the same company. They carry names such as Parent Herald, iSports Times., University Herald, Mobile&Apps and share a similar layout and design.

The owner in question, according to the copyright statement, is the New York based company IQ Adnet, which is… surprise surprise, an ad network that specializes in premium digital and native advertising. That explains everything.

There’s not much we can do about this, unfortunately, besides telling people what’s really going on and venting our frustration every now and then.

In the meantime, we’ll be waiting for these sites to pick up the Trump angle, which shouldn’t take long.

—

For the record. At TorrentFreak we don’t use pay per view ads, partly to get rid of the pageview obsession. This means that the clickbait title we used for this article doesn’t bring in any extra money.

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

‘Will Trump Shut Down The Pirate Bay?’

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

trumpd No, Trump personally can’t and won’t shut down The Pirate Bay. Period.

Excuse me for the clickbait title and the strange intro, but since it’s the topic of this opinion piece, I thought it was warranted.

Here’s what’s going on.

The torrent community is in turmoil after the shutdowns of KAT and Torrentz. We’ve written about this extensively, but there’s a rather frustrating side-effect that we haven’t discussed so far.

For some reason there’s a slew of news sites, prominently featured in search engines and on social media, that keep spreading fear and panic about a looming Pirate Bay shutdown.

Here are just a few headlines I’ve seen over the past few days. Click on the links at your own risk.

link

Pirate Bay to Shut Down…

mobileapps

link

These reports have absolutely nothing to do with an apparent Pirate Bay shutdown of course.

The last one, for example, bizarrely connects concerns the RIAA has about access to digital works at the Library of Congress, to the potential demise of TPB, which is pure nonsense.

Pirate Bay Declared Dead

isportsnonsense

Many other articles follow the same format, writing nonsensical trash such as the following:

“Other torrent sites such as TorrentFreak is not happy with the growing population of The Pirate Bay but they do appreciate the role that TPB is playing in the world of torrent sites.”

Might Shut Down Soon?

patentherald

So why are these “news” sites reporting this type of doom and gloom? The short answer is ad views. The clickbait articles are shared on social media, appear in Google news and in search results.

Click, Click, Click

tpbnews

We have addressed the clickbait issue in the past but in recent months it has gotten much worse.

There’s not much we can do about this, unfortunately, besides telling people what’s really going on and venting our frustration every now and then.

In the meantime, we’ll be waiting for these sites to pick up the Trump angle, which shouldn’t take long.

—

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

Apple: Keine iPhone-7-Verkaufszahlen vom ersten Wochenende mehr

Fürchtet der Konzern weniger verkaufte Modelle als im vergangenen Jahr? Apple wird nach dem Launch des iPhone 7 erstmals keine Verkaufszahlen des neuen Gerätes vom Startwochenende angeben. (iPhone 7, Apple)

Verkehrsminister: Dobrindt gründet Ethikkommission für autonome Autos

Wer ist schuld an einem Unfall, und wie sollen automatisierte Autos in Gefahrensituationen reagieren? Verkehrsminister Dobrindt will diese Fragen von einer Ethikkommission klären lassen. (Alexander Dobrindt, Internet)

Pokémon Go: Keine Monsterjagd mit Root und Jailbreak mehr

Um gegen Cheater vorzugehen, sperrt Pokémon-Entwickler Niantic künftig Nutzer mit Root und Jailbreak aus. Viele Spieler sind sauer und fordern, dass der Hersteller sich um die wirklichen Probleme des Spiels kümmern solle. Immerhin existiert ein Workaround. (Pokémon Go, Internet)

How Star Trek artists imagined the iPad… nearly 30 years ago

There are a lot of similarities between Apple’s iPad and TNG’s mobile computing.

To continue our celebration of Star Trek's 50th anniversary, we've decided to resurface a few of our favorite Trek stories from the Ars archives—like this one from August 2010. Nowadays, an iPad or tablet is some ho-hum consumer electronics device. But in the late 1980s?

One interesting characteristic of Star Trek: The Next Generation—one that separated it from the original series and most of the early films—was its widespread use of smooth, flat, touch-based control panels throughout the Enterprise-D. This touch interface was also used for numerous portable devices known as PADDs, or Personal Access Display Devices. These mobile computing terminals bear a striking resemblance to Apple's iPad—a mobile computing device largely defined by its smooth, flat touchscreen interface.

To understand the thinking that led to the design of the Star Trek PADD, we spoke to some of the people involved in production of ST:TNG (as well as other Star Trek TV series and films), including Michael Okuda, Denise Okuda, and Doug Drexler. All three were involved in various aspects of production art for Star Trek properties, including graphic design, set design, prop design, visual effects, art direction, and more. We also discussed their impressions of the iPad and how eerily similar it is to their vision of 24th century technology, how science fiction often influences technology, and what they believe is the future of human-machine interaction.

Read 36 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Less hype, more games: A whirlwind look at the playable fun of PAX West

A show for the fans, not the industry, means more fun stuff to play.

Ars' Sam Machkovech tears through as much of PAX West as he can in four days. Edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

SEATTLE—Board, card, cosplay, current-gen, handheld, pinball, retro, smartphone, and VR: these are the ABCs of the PAX gaming convention, which now hosts annual events in three American cities (and Melbourne, Australia, to boot). Even though PAX began in the early '00s as a reaction to gaming's sterile, industry-heavy expos, most modern gaming and fan cons now copy its style.

We're fine with that kind of flattery, but PAX still does it best. Its hometown iteration's 13th edition proved to be a whirlwind of happiness over hype. Even though E3's perfectly fine blockbusters dominated the exhibition hall (Battlefield 1 has already had its time in the spotlight), PAX isn't the kind of event that lets you write a "best games at the Con!" list. Still, between the show's freeform, play-how-you-want halls, I got to try out quite a few new-to-me games, which I will highlight below.

Read 26 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Paramount Wipes “Infringing” Ubuntu Torrent From Google

It’s no secret that copyright holders are trying to take down as much pirated content as they can, but targeting open source software is not something we see every day. Paramount Pictures recently sent a DMCA takedown to Google, listing a copy of the popular operating system Ubuntu. An honest mistake, perhaps, but a worrying one.

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

paramount In an effort to make piracy less visible, copyright holders are sending dozens of millions of DMCA takedown requests to Google every month.

Since there are so many takedown notices it’s no surprise that errors are made. In recent years we have frequently pointed out various mistakes, some more serious than others.

This week we spotted a takedown request that targets one of the most shared files on BitTorrent, Ubuntu releases.

Unlike Hollywood blockbusters Ubuntu distros are released under free software licenses, which means that people are encouraged to share them. In fact, Ubuntu’s official download site offers BitTorrent as one of the options.

For some reason, however, Paramount Pictures is not happy with seeing the popular operating system on torrent sites. In a notice sent out by the movie studio’s anti-piracy partner a few days ago, Google is asked to remove an Ubuntu torrent download page on ExtraTorrent.

According to the notice, the Ubuntu release infringes the copyrights of the movie Transformers: Age of Extinction.

The “infringing” Ubuntu url

ubuntu

It’s a mystery why this URL is targeted as the entire page doesn’t contain any references to Transformers, at least when we checked.

There is a likely possibility that the list of “recent searches” at one point included a Transformers mention, but even then the takedown request would clearly be overbroad.

Despite the obvious non-infringing status of the Ubuntu release, Google moved ahead and removed the page from its search index. Perhaps not surprisingly, considering the volume of requests that the company has to process.

Google currently receives reports for around three million “pirate” URLs per day. While the search engine has some automated filters to catch mistakes, it’s virtually impossible to check all submissions by hand.

URL removed

googlegone

Paramount’s mistake may be relatively harmless, but it shows once again how much can go wrong with these automated DMCA notices. Whether these errors can be rooted out is doubtful as there is very little incentive for copyright holders to improve their accuracy.

Google, however, previously told us that they are determined to prevent abuse and mistakes.

“We still do our best to catch errors or abuse so we don’t mistakenly disable access to non-infringing material. Google continues to put substantial resources into improving and streamlining this process, including into identifying erroneous and abusive takedowns, and deterring abuse,” a spokesperson said.

Luckily, a search for Ubuntu download still features plenty of options.

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

Without Star Trek, there would be no SpaceX or Blue Origin

Utopian series planted dreams in young minds that commercial space titans pursue today.

At Blue Origin’s headquarters near Seattle, one of the highlights of any tour is Jeff Bezos’ dazzling collection of space and science fiction memorabilia. The world’s fourth richest man grew up enthralled with space, and his collection includes everything from real-world spacesuits, to a full-size Battlestar Galactica pressure door, to a hidebound photo album kept by a soldier stationed in the 1970s at Baikonur, where the Soviets launched Yuri Gagarin’s rocket into space. Among these displays are several Star Trek collectibles, including a model Starship Enterprise used in the first three Star Trek movies.

A self-admitted Trekkie, Bezos founded Blue Origin 16 years ago this month, and the company stands at the vanguard of the new space movement. He, along with Elon Musk, and to a lesser extent others like Microsoft’s Paul Allen, have begun to shake up the stodgy aerospace industry with new companies and new ideas. They have injected personal capital and innovation into spaceflight for a single, overarching reason—they want to see humanity expand into space. And the impetus for this came early in life, largely from Star Trek and its optimistic vision of humanity as a species that had mastered spaceflight and set about exploring the galaxy.

For Trek fans of a certain age, spreading humanity across the cosmos does not seem like an impossible dream. Bezos, 52, and Musk, 45, grew up in the 1970s, an anything-was-possible era. NASA had just sent humans to the Moon, and Voyager probes were flying out into the solar system. The space agency, too, was developing the space shuttle, which promised to send hundreds if not thousands of people to space, as well as plant the seeds for a vibrant, in-space economy.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Schleuder: Wie verschlüsselt man eine Mailingliste?

E-Mails zu verschlüsseln gilt schon als kompliziert, doch wie verschlüsselt man eigentlich eine ganze Mailingliste? Das Tool Schleuder soll das ermöglichen, allerdings kann der Server dabei Nachrichten mitlesen. (OpenPGP, E-Mail)