Month: April 2017

Mehr Grafikleistung im Low-End-Segment: Die Radeon RX 560 folgt auf die Radeon RX 460 und nutzt durchweg 4 GByte Videospeicher. Die Radeon RX 550 soll günstige PCs fit für E-Sport-Titel machen. Dafür hat AMD einen neuen Polaris-Chip entwickelt. (AMD Polaris, AMD)

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Das Intel Developer Forum (IDF) ist nicht mehr: Wie Intel lapidar mitteilte, wird 2017 und darüber hinaus kein IDF stattfinden. Stattdessen sollen kleinere, teils lokale Veranstaltungen die Zukunft sein. Wirklich überraschend ist der Schritt nicht. (IDF, Prozessor)

Auch in der Wüste enthält die Luft Feuchtigkeit. Forscher aus den USA haben ein Gerät entwickelt, das der Luft das Wasser entzieht. Es basiert auf einem Material mit einer großen inneren Oberfläche und nutzt die Sonne als Energiequelle. (Wissenschaft, Technologie)

Game protection engine Denuvo's battle with pirates has intensified in recent times due to the cracking of several high profile titles, but the company's latest efforts to refresh the protection appears to have been cracked already.

Only introduced early this year, the latest version of Denuvo, dubbed v4, was the company's response to the premature cracking of A-list release Resident Evil 7. The refreshed protection reset the clock on release groups who had gotten more and more efficient at cracking previous versions of Denuvo.

But a month after the release of game 2Dark, which was one of the first games to feature Denuvo v4, the protection engine has already been cracked and pirated copies of 2Dark are now available to download at all the usual places.

Games that use or will use the latest Denuvo engine include Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, Dead Rising 4, Nier: Automata, Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, and Mass Effect: Andromeda, which had v4 patched in after release.

With the way Denuvo works, cracking one game does not automatically crack other games that use the same engine version. However, the techniques used to crack Denuvo can sometimes be transferred to use with other games protected by the same engine, and it could mean that other v4 protected games will soon fall.

While a month of protection is still a long time, giving publishers protection against piracy during a game's most crucial (and most profitable) release period, the fact that crackers managed to crack a fresh new version of Denuvo in such a relatively short period, may spell bad news to other game publishers keen to sign up or already using v4.

[via DSOG, Arstechnica, TorrentFreak]

Trotz staatlicher Prämie finden sich bislang nur wenig Käufer für Elektroautos. Wer einmal versucht hat, in einer Tiefgarage eine Ladestation zu installieren, merkt sehr schnell, woran das liegt. Eine Analyse von Friedhelm Greis (Elektroauto, RFID)

Seit fast zwei Jahren arbeitet das Frankfurter Team von Cloud Imperium Games an der Darstellung von Planeten und Monden in Star Citizen. Nun steht die sogenannte Planetary Tech laut Chefentwickler Chris Roberts kurz vor der Veröffentlichung. (Star Citizen, Games)

According to the world’s major movie studios, piracy during a movie’s opening release window is the most damaging to the industry. That’s almost completely down to the way movies are marketed.

In the weeks and early months following a major title’s debut, the only place to see it is in a theater. When people make brand new movies available illegally in the home, it’s argued that fewer people go to the cinema and the subsequent retail window suffers with fewer sales.

This disruption in the market is the work of so-called movie ‘cammers’, people who enter movie theaters around the world, record the latest titles with a video device, and then make them available online and/or to physical bootleggers. They’re a prime target for movie studios who invest considerable resources in tracking them down, especially when it comes to the biggest titles.

Last Friday the MPAA was doing just that when one of their investigators shadowed two men into a Linthicum, Maryland theater from the parking lot at around 7:30 pm.

Troy Cornish, 38, of Baltimore, and Floyd Buchanan, 35, of Dundalk, were allegedly seen with recording equipment outside while preparing to target the US premiere of The Fate of the Furious (F8) starring Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson.

Like its predecessors, F8 is destined to be a guaranteed hit with the pirating masses so getting an early copy as quickly as possible is high on the list for capable cammers.

According to Anne Arundel County Police, when Cornish and Buchanan were approached inside the theater they were actively recording the $250m blockbuster. The pair were later found to be wearing some kind of recording harnesses under their clothing which held cell phones against their chests.

Both men were arrested and subsequently charged with the unauthorized recording of a movie in a theater. According to a local report, they face one year in prison and/or a $2,500 fine.

It’s worth bearing in mind, however, that the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act (which usually covers such offenses) can see a first time offender imprisoned for up to three years and a repeat offender for up to six. Potentially complicating matters is that the MPAA investigator told police that Buchanan was already known to the industry group as a movie piracy suspect.

While the fate of the pair will remain to be seen, the fate of The Fate of the Furious is already sealed in piracy circles. After being pirated (presumably by another group) within 24 hours of its release, the movie entered TF’s weekly “Top Ten Most Pirated” chart yesterday at number six, a position that’s guaranteed to improve next week.

There are several versions available online, but without a doubt the most popular is a cammed version uploaded by notorious release group Hive-CM8. It was reportedly obtained from a ‘latino’ source and appears online with hard-coded subtitles cropped off.

Hive-CM8 is perhaps best known for their DVD screener leaks over the past couple of years (1,2) but are known to work with movie cammers too.

The MPAA is yet to make a statement on the arrests of Cornish and Buchanan but recently noted that The Fate of the Furious had contributed over $65 million to Georgia’s local economy while employing over 1,600 local workers.

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