Month: November 2016

Photofast iType-C Flash Drive: USB-Stick für vier Schnittstellen inklusive USB-C

Photofast hat mit dem iType-C Flash Drive einen USB-Stick mit vier Schnittstellen vorgestellt. Für Apple-Nutzer ist das Gerät interessant, da es Lightning und USB-Typ-C sowie USB-A unterstützt. (Macbook, Speichermedien)

Photofast hat mit dem iType-C Flash Drive einen USB-Stick mit vier Schnittstellen vorgestellt. Für Apple-Nutzer ist das Gerät interessant, da es Lightning und USB-Typ-C sowie USB-A unterstützt. (Macbook, Speichermedien)

Virtualisierungslösung: Update von Parallels Desktop 12 schränkt Funktionen ein

Parallels Desktop 12 ermöglicht es seit dem Update auf Version 12.1 nicht mehr, virtuelle Maschinen mit mehr als acht GByte RAM und vier virtuellen Prozessoren einzurichten. Nur die Aboversion arbeitet ohne Einschränkungen. (Parallels, Mac OS X)

Parallels Desktop 12 ermöglicht es seit dem Update auf Version 12.1 nicht mehr, virtuelle Maschinen mit mehr als acht GByte RAM und vier virtuellen Prozessoren einzurichten. Nur die Aboversion arbeitet ohne Einschränkungen. (Parallels, Mac OS X)

Revolution Pi: Raspberry Pi übernimmt die Kontrolle im Schaltschrank

Das Herzstück einer neuen Serie von Steuerungsmodulen des Herstellers Kunbus ist ein Raspberry Pi. Für die Konfiguration und Steuerung der Hardware-Module stellt der Hersteller eigene Software bereit. (Raspberry Pi, Arduino)

Das Herzstück einer neuen Serie von Steuerungsmodulen des Herstellers Kunbus ist ein Raspberry Pi. Für die Konfiguration und Steuerung der Hardware-Module stellt der Hersteller eigene Software bereit. (Raspberry Pi, Arduino)

Dealmaster: It’s Cyber Monday! Bring on the deals [Update #2]

We’ve got deals on everything from TVs to Segways.

Greetings, Arsians! It's Cyber Monday, one of the busiest online shopping days of the year! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, the Dealmaster is here with a big list of items for everyone on your shopping list. We've got live pages for Amazon and Dell, and deals on everything from TVs to Segways. If what you're looking for isn't in the list below, you can check out even more Cyber Monday Deals at TechBargains.

Update #2: Even more deals.

See the latest Cyber Monday Deals as they go live at TechBargains...

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IPTV: Mass Piracy That’s Flying Largely Under The Radar

Kodi and its third party ‘pirate’ addons have been getting an awful lot of press this year but there’s a hidden side to streaming that receives much less attention. Enter the world of black-market IPTV, streaming services that provide a TV, sports and movie experience that rival commercial offerings.

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

Anyone with a Kodi setup understands how it works. Download the software, install a bunch of third party addons, and enjoy TV shows, sports, movies and PPVs, all for free.

While millions have fun doing just that, even the leading experts in Kodi setups acknowledge that they are limited by the content being provided by third parties. Sometimes the quality is good and the service is reliable, but at the other extremes people can spend more time getting stuff to work than actually watching and relaxing.

For those who simply can’t stand this kind of messing around, going legit is the sensible option. Subscribe to a big TV package with a local provider, pay for all the sports and PPVs, tack on the movie package, throw in Netflix for good measure, and then sit back and enjoy the ride. Trouble is, it costs a fortune.

However, somewhere in the middle lies a third way. It’s a lurking piracy monster that is getting very little press.

IPTV is short for Internet Protocol television, which is a fancy way of describing TV content that’s streamed over the Internet rather than via terrestrial, satellite, or cable formats. That said, thinking this is all IPTV has to offer would be a big mistake.

We aren’t going to name names, but the service shown to TF this week boasts more than 3,000 live and premium TV channels from all over the world, many of them in HD quality. Apparently a bigger package of more than 4,000 channels is also available if you really want to gorge on media.

Streamed over the web, the channels can be viewed on a range of devices, from VLC Media Player on PC, through to Android and Apple apps. However, the jewel in the crown is a tiny little device called a Mag Box.

magbox254

A Mag Box is a cheap Linux-based box that plugs into any modern TV and utterly transforms the way streaming pirate content is consumed. Instead of reams of text in a VLC playlist, for example, Mag Boxes and an appropriate IPTV service are almost indistinguishable from the real deal.

Channels are presented in Electronic Program Guide format (EPG) and switching from one to another is achieved in fractions of a second. Poor photography skills (and dodgy Christmas wallpaper aside), the menus are very well presented.

iptv-1

As shown in the image above, when a channel is selected a moving preview appears in the window on the right. Under that sits an EPG covering the next few hours which allows for planning ahead. Also accessible are full channel EPG views that are easily as good as many commercial offerings.

But while at first glance these services seem dedicated to only live TV (albeit on any channel you could imagine, anywhere in the world), many have another trick up their sleeve. The service we saw also carries hundreds of the latest movies, up to 4K in resolution and even in 3D. They too can be accessed from professional looking menus and play, interruption free, every single time.

iptv-4

Also on offer is a massive ‘catch-up’ service which provides all the latest episodes of the most popular shows on-demand. Shows appear to be available minutes after airing and can be paused and skipped within a convenient media player setup.

Instead of using dedicated hardware, many IPTV users also use Kodi to view these kinds of streams. There are plenty of tutorials available online which detail how to activate the PVR component of the popular media player to access these kinds of services. However, from what we’ve seen so far, the Mag Box experience is head and shoulders above everything else.

So what’s stopping everyone from dumping torrents and web-based streaming services and jumping over to premium IPTV products right now? Well, it’s the same old story – cost.

Like a good VPN service, a decent IPTV service costs money – a few dollars, pounds, or euros per month. Depending on what they’re offering, Netflix-style deals are possible but for those who simply must have everything, it’s closer to double that price per month, or less if one subscribes for a whole year.

That being said, as we’ve seen before in many areas of piracy, these pirate IPTV services offer massively more bang for your buck than official offerings. The only practical problem is that there aren’t enough hours in a lifetime to watch everything they have to offer. The selection is bewildering.

Needless to say, these services are definitely illegal, certainly when it comes down to offering them to the public. Whether it’s illegal for users to watch these streams is down to individual countries’ laws, but on the whole the legal system is untested in both Europe and the United States so prosecutions seem unlikely, at least for now.

The video embedded below shows a similar IPTV service to the one seen by TF. It is not the actual provider and we certainly don’t endorse any of these products

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

Did 1918 flu pandemic discriminate by social class?

Evidence for socioeconomic risk factors has been elusive.

Enlarge (credit: flickr user: sari_dennise)

If an influenza pandemic were to hit us tomorrow, who would need the most help? Obvious answers include children, the elderly, and people who are already ill. We expect them to be at higher risk than healthy adults—but that isn’t always the case.

What about the poor? Depending on who you ask, intuitions vary: some people assume influenza does not discriminate by social class and that everyone is at risk. Others might guess that conditions that go hand-in-hand with poverty (like poor access to healthcare or crowded living quarters) create a higher level of risk. But everyone is guessing, because evidence on this question has been surprisingly difficult to pin down.

While many studies have analyzed the risks of flu on a country or county level, the city-level is where we’d really be able to compare strong gradients in wealth to risks from the pandemic. That’s what a recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) does: it compares census data dating from the 1918 flu pandemic in Chicago to health records from the time. “We had this great data,” says Madhura Rane, one of the authors of the paper, “and we thought it would be interesting to see this association on a small spatial scale.” She and her fellow authors found evidence that poverty made a difference in that pandemic.

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Target selling Amazon Fire tablet for just $28

Target selling Amazon Fire tablet for just $28

One of the hottest deals over this Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend has been Amazon’s Fire Tablet, which normally sells for $50, but which is currently on sale for $33.33 from Amazon and several other stores.

But if that’s not a big enough discount for you, Target is going a bit further: the retailer is selling a number of products for 15 percent off this weekend, and that includes Amazon’s cheapest tablet.

That means you can pick up an Amazon Fire 7″ tablet for $28.34 before tax, both in stores and online.

Continue reading Target selling Amazon Fire tablet for just $28 at Liliputing.

Target selling Amazon Fire tablet for just $28

One of the hottest deals over this Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend has been Amazon’s Fire Tablet, which normally sells for $50, but which is currently on sale for $33.33 from Amazon and several other stores.

But if that’s not a big enough discount for you, Target is going a bit further: the retailer is selling a number of products for 15 percent off this weekend, and that includes Amazon’s cheapest tablet.

That means you can pick up an Amazon Fire 7″ tablet for $28.34 before tax, both in stores and online.

Continue reading Target selling Amazon Fire tablet for just $28 at Liliputing.

Gegen Uber: Deutsche Taxi-Branche bringt erstes Sharing-Angebot

Der Deutsche Taxi- und Mietwagenverband (BZP) will ihren Kunden erlauben, über eine App ein Taxi zu teilen um so Kosten zu sparen. Damit wird auf die Konkurrenz durch Uber reagiert. (Uber, Startup)

Der Deutsche Taxi- und Mietwagenverband (BZP) will ihren Kunden erlauben, über eine App ein Taxi zu teilen um so Kosten zu sparen. Damit wird auf die Konkurrenz durch Uber reagiert. (Uber, Startup)

Easter eggs evolved: Why gamers spent 3-years-plus studying GTAV’s Mount Chiliad

This unsolved mystery is a perfect artifact of communal sleuthing in the Reddit age.

Enlarge / The screenshot that kicked off a multi-year easter egg hunt. (credit: Bertojones)

Just below the peak of Mount Chiliad, a huge mountain in the far north of San Andreas, a mysterious mural sits high atop a cliff face. It looks like a map of the mountain's interior—a network of tunnels that connect five small chambers and three large ones with what appear to be a UFO, an egg, and a jetpack within them. Whether it's actually a map isn't clear. Nearby, painted on the bottom edge of a lookout platform, are the words "come back when your journey is complete." And beneath that, painted on the ground, there's a red eye.

It's a strange and alluring set of odd, possibly related mysteries. And for most people who see them, that's all they are—a curiosity in a world full of curiosities that Rockstar made to give Grand Theft Auto V's setting a sense of being lived in.

But for a diehard group of mystery hunters, and for the hundreds of thousands of intrigued onlookers who keep tabs on their work, these phenomena hold the key to something big. Possibly huge. It's a secret that may be of monumental significance, or that at the very least must involve something really cool: a hidden jetpack, maybe a UFO you can fly, or a super-awesome weapon. Whatever it is, these sleuthing gamers want it. And they won't stop until they either find it or prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the whole thing is one enormous wild goose chase.

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