April 2017 – news.buyenne.com

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event

“Smiling Dog Crew” shows how you should never let a wolf guard your chickens.

In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Elite players could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down.

The event was organized in part by science fiction author Drew Wagar, who has written one of the official Elite: Dangerous tie-in novels. Wagar—with some assistance from Frontier Developments to make the magic happen—would be controlling Salomé's ship as she made her mad dash back to the core worlds; the result of the run would be featured in Wagar’s upcoming Elite novel. If Salomé lived and delivered her message, that’s what he’d write in the book. If she died, the book would be written to reflect that, immortalizing the player character who did the killing.

The stage seemed set for an exciting afternoon of hunting Salomé online, tracking her whereabouts, and participating in some fun player vs. player combat. There were some other “VIPs” flying with Salomé with their own messages to deliver, but Salomé herself was where all the player interest lay.

Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

ATM-Style Kiosk Pumps Out Pirate Movies to USB Sticks

Services like RedBox have been delivering movies to the masses for more than 15 years but hiring out discs via a vending machine is always bound to cause problems. So how about a nice touchscreen shopping mall kiosk that dumps the latest movies to a USB stick for a few cents each?

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

For more than 30 years, consumers have obtained music and movies written to polycarbonate discs. CD, DVD and now Blu-ray discs are recognizable across the world as a cheap and pretty reliable carrier for large volumes of digital data.

While it may take a while before Blu-ray takes its final breaths, CDs and DVDs are already on borrowed time. For the younger generation already accustomed to storing huge amounts of data on tiny MicroSD cards and USB sticks, a plastic disc carrying content is almost as outdated as a vinyl record.

With this in mind, millions of consumers would welcome the idea of getting their movies in convenient formats such as AVI or MP4. This would enable them to freely move content from device to device, without having to spend more money. Of course, entertainment companies don’t like that idea at all, especially when it comes to movies.

That’s where SwiftMedia comes in, and it’s a sight to behold.

Spotted by a TorrentFreak reader in a shopping mall in Ethiopia, this bright yellow kiosk looks like an ATM. However, on closer inspection it reveals itself to be a self-service media machine that does everything that RedBox can do (and more) without a plastic disc in sight.

A SwiftMedia terminal in situ (credit)

“At the beginning of this year, All Mart (the Walmart equivalent here) brought in a new machine. It’s basically a monitor with a USB port but shaped like an ATM. It’s called SwiftMedia and there’s a guy who ‘maintains’ it,” our source explains.

“Basically you go to this very big store and you approach the machine and you plug in a USB drive. The screen will turn on and it will let you browse through a massive archive of movies.”

Screen close-up

As mentioned earlier, this is a completely disc-less system, meaning that transfers of all content purchased from the machine end up on a customer-provided USB stick. Needless to say, DRM and copyright protection aren’t high on the agenda for this unusual and innovative machine.

All the movies – on USB

Prices are cheap too, with packages available for 25, 50 and 100 birr ($1, $2 and $3). Feature movies reportedly cost between 3 and 5 birr (13 to 22 cents) depending on the movie release date, with older movies costing more. Documentaries weigh in at the top of the range with single songs and TV shows costing 13 cents.

“At first I assumed these movies had their rights lifted or something because well, you know, but then I later found out that the movies I had first seen were just there on release day,” our source continues.

“Apparently the maintenance guy torrents all day and stores the data on his drive, the drive shown by the SwiftMedia monitor. This would not have been a big deal as this is Ethiopia and the allegedly democratic government has bigger issues.”

Of course, something like this wouldn’t last five minutes in the West and certainly wouldn’t appear in a shopping mall, let alone Walmart. So TorrentFreak contacted Escape Computing, the company that appears to be behind the project, to find out more about their enterprise.

At the time of publication we had received no response, but we did manage to track down a job listing posted last year where the company sought an individual to act in a sales and technical capacity.

It’s not clear whether the position was filled but whoever got the job certainly has a unique role to fulfill in this unusual yet somewhat innovative project.

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

Apple adds one more year to first-generation Watch warranty

To cover old Apple Watches with swollen battery issues.

Apple added one extra year to its warranty for some first-generation Apple Watches, according to a note sent to authorized service providers obtained by 9to5Mac. The company will now cover eligible Apple Watches for three years after the original purchase date. The first-gen devices covered by this warranty are those experiencing ballooning battery issues.

"Apple has extended Service coverage to eligible Apple Watch (1st gen) models with an expanded/swollen battery to three years after the original date of purchase," the note states. "Eligible devices will be covered for two years beyond the original 1-year Limited Warranty."

Customers on Apple forums and Reddit have described these battery problems as far back as November 2016. Some customers reported watch displays being partially displaced from the case thanks to an expanding battery inside the device.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Onyx Boox Max Carta is a 13.3 inch, 2200 x 1650 eReader

Onyx makes eReaders and other devices with E Ink screens. For the most part, the company’s products are Kindle-sized. But Onyx also has a 9.7 inch model called the Prometheus, and last year the company launched a 13.3 inch eReader called the Onyx Boox Max. Now there’s an updated large-screen mode. The Onyx Boox Max […]

Onyx Boox Max Carta is a 13.3 inch, 2200 x 1650 eReader is a post from: Liliputing

A farewell to kings? New ideas on the vanishing monarch butterflies

A new book suggests a different reason for our vanishing butterflies.

Everybody loves monarch butterflies. Author Anurag Agrawal refers to them as “the Bambi of the insect world.” They are specifically bred to be released at weddings; their image has been pressed into service as the symbol of environmental organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Non-GMO project.

This popularity makes them a great research system for two reasons. First, funding is abundant and easy to drum up. And, unlike other darlings of conservationists—like polar bears, which look like cute, cuddly stuffed animals—monarch butterflies are bugs. So animal rights activists don’t really get worked up when scientists breed them and experiment on them, then sacrifice them and grind up their bodies for analysis.

Regular donations and a lack of harassment from PETA, however convenient though they may be, are hardly the only reasons why Agrawal has devoted his life to studying monarchs or why he has written a book about them called Monarchs and Milkweed: A Migrating Butterfly, a Poisonous Plant, and Their Remarkable Story of Coevolution. Monarches and their sole food source, the toxic milkweed plant, provide a great example of coevolution.

Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Wilson’s Heart is Oculus’ most interesting VR misfire yet

Game misses the mark as VR adventure. What does that mean for VR’s early days?

When will a VR system finally get an honest-to-goodness adventure? Early adopters and curious onlookers continue to ask this question, wondering when they'll get their own unique, hours-upon-hours mix of story, puzzles, battles, and thrills.

The closest answer up until now remains the incredible and memorable Resident Evil 7. However, that's a bit of a cheat, since it launched primarily for normal TV displays with an optional, albeit awesome, VR mode attached. Thus, the hunt's still on—and the folks at Oculus have been crowing for months about how their upcoming game Wilson's Heart would do the trick.

I'm not just here to inform you that Oculus's high-budget, high-production-value attempt missed the mark—especially for those readers who don't own an Oculus and high-end PC to match. Rather, I'm interested in exploring just how this week's new game, which once looked quite promising, slammed to Earth with melted wings on its back—and what that says for the current state of VR gaming.

Read 29 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Undeveloped microbiomes make infants more prone to illness

Undeveloped immune systems are not the only culprit in infants’ susceptibility.

As every parent knows, newborns and infants are extremely prone to infections. This increased susceptibility is typically attributed to babies’ immature immune systems—since they’re so new to the world, babies haven’t been exposed to many pathogens yet. But there may be more to this phenomenon than previously thought. A recent paper published in Science suggests that infants’ underdeveloped gut microbiomes may be largely responsible for their increased susceptibility to infection.

The microbiome is a diverse community of organisms living in a single environment, including environments like the bodies of larger animals. In humans, the bulk of the microbiome is in the intestines, where these tiny organisms help us digest food and regulate some of our body’s responses to our diet. However, studying the microbiome in humans is challenging for practical and ethical reasons. As a result, mice have the most widely studied mammalian microbiomes.

The recent Science paper provides new insights into how the microbiome interacts with a mouse’s ability to resist infection. For this study, germ-free adult mice were given a transplant of gut contents from either neonatal mice, adolescent mice, or adult mice. The transplant came from the first few inches of the large intestine/colon, so this transplant process was not dissimilar to a stool transplant (more commonly known as a poop transplant). These transplants altered the gut microbiome of the recipient so that it matched the donor mouse’s.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Skytorrents: A Refreshing Ad-free and Privacy Focused Torrent Site

More than a decade ago most torrent sites were started as hobby projects. Gradually, however, outsiders started to recognize that these sites could be used to turn a profit, which resulted in an avalanche of smaller ad-ridden torrent farms. In this era, the ad-free and privacy-focused “Skytorrents” is a breath of fresh air.

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

Many file-sharing fans see torrent site operators as like Robin Hood, serving free goods to the public at great risk with minimal financial incentive.

Copyright holders, on the other hand, portray the same people as greedy criminals who are exploiting their work for financial gain, subjecting the public to malicious ads.

While there is no standard torrent site owner, the truth often lies somewhere in the middle. Many site owners make money but not the millions that are sometimes claimed. And yes most sites have shady ads, but that’s often because these are pushed by the advertising networks they use.

A torrent site without ads is rare, but a few months ago a newcomer appeared that promised just that.

When Skytorrents first showed up, advertising an ad-free and privacy-focused service, we were skeptical. They wouldn’t be the first to start this way but change their tune when visitors started coming in.

However, months later the site is still around, so we decided to ask why they do what they do and how they are able to survive.

“We will NEVER place any ads. The site will remain ad-free or it will shut down. When our funds dry up, we will go for donations. We can also handover to someone with similar intent, interests, and the goal of a private and ad-free world,” Skytorrents’ operator informed us.

“The main motivation is to showcase an ad-free experience to users. We are giving something good back to society.”

Setting up a torrent site without ads isn’t hard, but the privacy element is trickier. To achieve this Skytorrents has had to make a lot of concessions, both in design and the general functioning of the site.

Skytorrents

Users will not be able to create an account, for example, as that created a weak spot. The same is true for Javascript, which isn’t used at all.

“For example, using a CDN breaches user privacy. As far as complete privacy is concerned, either there is complete privacy or zero privacy. For maintaining complete privacy, we do not use cookies, java scripts or user logins. We also do not have any moderators,” Skytorrents informed us.

The result is a surprisingly fast and clean search engine, that runs from a CentOS operated server with a bunch of C code, but without common tools such as PHP or MySQL.

As for the torrents, these are all collected from BitTorrent’s DHT network. Before they are listed all torrents have to pass through two spam detection algorithms which get better and better every day.

In addition, there is also a separate tool that “confirms” torrents to be genuine. While 99% of the torrents are spam-free already, for “genuine” torrents this goes up to nearly 100%.

“We also have another algorithm which validates and marks genuine torrents. However, note that 99% of listed torrents are spam free. A genuine marked torrent can be assured 99.99 % of the time,” Skytorrents’ operator says.

At the time of writing, Skytorrents lists 12,645,486 torrents and the site’s operators plan to keep expanding their database, as well as the number of users while keeping their ad-free and privacy oriented values.

Whether they will be able to pull this off has yet to be seen, but over the past few months they’ve kept their promise.

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

Hauptversammlung: Rocket Internet will eine Bank sein

Die Klonfabrik Rocket Internet will in neue Bereiche vordringen und wird Anfang Juni ihre Satzung ändern. Dann sind auch Finanzgeschäfte möglich. (Rocket Internet, Internet)

Alphabet: Google-Chef verdient 200 Millionen US-Dollar

Der relativ unbekannte Sundar Pichai ist der bestbezahlte Mitarbeiter von Alphabet. Pichai führt Google erst seit dem Konzernumbau. (Alphabet, Google)