Die Community-Flatrate von Bild Mobil wird bald aus dem Sortiment genommen. Auch Bestandskunden werden die interne Telefon- und SMS-Flatrate bald nicht mehr verwenden können. Als möglicher Grund wird die neue EU-Roaming-Regelung vermutet. (Mobilfunk, Handy) Month: June 2017
When a Big Torrent Site Dies, Some Hope it Will Be Right Back
ExtraTorrent bit the dust last month alongside a warning from its operator to stay away from copycat sites. But despite this clear message and reiterations all around, a hard core of former users couldn’t shake the belief that one of the new sites was actually the real deal. Some people, it seems, just can’t accept that a relationship is over.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
For a niche that has had millions of words written about it over the past 18 years or so, most big piracy stories have had the emotions of people at their core.
When The Pirate Bay was taken down by the police eleven years ago it was global news, but the real story was the sense of disbelief and loss felt by millions of former users. Outsiders may dismiss these feelings, but they are very common and very real.
Of course, those negative emotions soon turned to glee when the site returned days later, but full-on, genuine resurrections are something that few big sites have been able to pull off since. What we have instead today is the sudden disappearance of iconic sites and a scrambling by third-party opportunists to fill in the gaps with look-a-like platforms.
The phenomenon has affected many big sites, from The Pirate Bay itself through to KickassTorrents, YTS/YIFY, and more recently, ExtraTorrent. When sites disappear, it’s natural for former users to look for replacements. And when those replacements look just like the real deal there’s a certain amount of comfort to be had. For many users, these sites provide the perfect antidote to their feelings of loss.
That being said, the clone site phenomenon has seriously got out of hand. Pioneered by players in the streaming site scene, fake torrent sites can now be found in abundance wherever there is a brand worth copying. ExtraTorrent operator SaM knew this when he closed his site last month, and he took the time to warn people away from them personally.
“Stay away from fake ExtraTorrent websites and clones,” he said.
It’s questionable how many listened.
Within days, users were flooding to fake ExtraTorrent sites, encouraged by some elements of the press. Despite having previously reported SaM’s clear warnings, some publications were still happy to report that ExtraTorrent was back, purely based on the word of the fake sites themselves. And I’ve got a bridge for sale, if you have the cash.
While misleading news reports must take some responsibility, it’s clear that when big sites go down a kind of grieving process takes place among dedicated former users, making some more likely to clutch at straws. While some simply move on, others who have grown more attached to a platform they used to call home can go into denial.
This reaction has often been seen in TF’s mailbox, when YTS/YIFY went down in particular. More recently, dozens of emails informed us that ExtraTorrent had gone, with many others asking when it was coming back. But the ones that stood out most were from people who had read SaM’s message, read TF’s article stating that ALL clones were fakes, yet still wanted to know if sites a, b and c were legitimate or not.
We approached a user on Reddit who asked similar things and been derided by other users for his apparent reluctance to accept that ExtraTorrent had gone. We didn’t find stupidity (as a few in /r/piracy had cruelly suggested) but a genuine sense of loss.
“I loved the site dude, what can I say?” he told TF. “Just kinda got used to it and hung around. Before I knew it I was logging in every day. In time it just felt like home. I miss it.”
The user hadn’t seen the articles claiming that one of the imposter ExtraTorrent sites was the real deal. He did, however, seem a bit unsettled when we told him it was a fake. But when we asked if he was going to stop using it, we received an emphatic “no”.
“Dude it looks like ET and yeah it’s not quite the same but I can get my torrents. Why does it matter what crew [runs it]?” he said.
It does matter, of course. The loss of a proper torrent site like ExtraTorrent, which had releasers and a community, can never be replaced by a custom-skinned Pirate Bay mirror. No matter how much it looks like a lost friend, it’s actually a pig in lipstick that contributes little to the ecosystem.
That being said, it’s difficult to counter the fact that some of these clones make people happy. They fill a void that other sites, for mainly cosmetic reasons, can’t fill. With this in mind, the grounds for criticism weaken a little – but not much.
For anyone who has watched the Black Mirror episode ‘Be Right Back‘, it’s clear that sudden loss can be a hard thing for humans to accept. When trying to fill the gap, what might initially seem like a good replacement is almost certainly destined to disappoint longer term, when the sub-standard copy fails to capture the heart and soul of the real deal.
It’s an issue that will occupy the piracy scene for some time to come, but interestingly, it’s also an argument that Hollywood has used against piracy itself for decades. But that’s another story.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Oneplus Two: Das Warten auf Android 7 könnte vergebens sein
Wird das Versprechen gebrochen? Seit vielen Monaten warten Besitzer eines Oneplus Two auf das Update auf Android 7.0 alias Nougat. Das Update wird möglicherweise nie erscheinen. Für aktuellere Oneplus-Smartphones gibt es neue Versprechungen. (Oneplus, Smartphone)
Wird das Versprechen gebrochen? Seit vielen Monaten warten Besitzer eines Oneplus Two auf das Update auf Android 7.0 alias Nougat. Das Update wird möglicherweise nie erscheinen. Für aktuellere Oneplus-Smartphones gibt es neue Versprechungen. (Oneplus, Smartphone) Essential: Andy Rubin hat Ärger wegen Markenrechten
Andy Rubins Firma Essential muss sich mit Markenrechtsstreitigkeiten herumplagen. Der Zubehörhersteller Spigen verlangt, dass Rubins Firma die Marke Essential nicht länger verwendet. Das zuständige Amt hatte zuvor Eintragungen für die Marke abgelehnt. (Andy Rubin, Rechtsstreitigkeiten)
Andy Rubins Firma Essential muss sich mit Markenrechtsstreitigkeiten herumplagen. Der Zubehörhersteller Spigen verlangt, dass Rubins Firma die Marke Essential nicht länger verwendet. Das zuständige Amt hatte zuvor Eintragungen für die Marke abgelehnt. (Andy Rubin, Rechtsstreitigkeiten) Weekly News Roundup (June 4, 2017)
From a speedy crack to a silent withdraw, read the news roundup for the week ending June 4, 2017
Continue reading …
From a speedy crack to a silent withdraw, read the news roundup for the week ending June 4, 2017
Doctor Who: Lie of the Land review
After so much spectacular promise in Extremis, the Monk trilogy fizzles out.
Enlarge (credit: Simon Ridgway/Stuart Manning/BBC)
This is a post-UK broadcast review of Doctor Who: Lie of the Land. River Song always warned the Doctor against spoilers, so be sure to watch the episode first. Doctor Who, season 10, airs on Saturdays at 7:35pm UK time on BBC One, and 9pm EDT on BBC America.
After last week's lumpen middle, I was really hoping that Lie of the Land would tie up this trilogy of episodes in a neat bow. Instead, the storyline feels like an incoherent mess even as Pearl Mackie's performance as Bill continues to shine.
The narration and lack of action are jarring, and while the BBC producers behind Doctor Who are generally pretty good at this sci-fi on a shoestring budget thing, Lie of the Land really deserves a bit more investment—particularly in development of the script, penned by Toby Whithouse (whose previous eps include Before the Flood, Under the Lake, and A Town Called Mercy).
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Torrents Help Researchers Worldwide to Study Babies’ Brains
Researchers from three leading British institutions are using BitTorrent to share over 150 GB of unique high-resolution brain scans of unborn babies with colleagues worldwide. Using the popular file-sharing protocol is a “no-brainer,” according to a Research Associate, who says that dealing with people’s misconceptions toward torrents was one of the biggest challenges.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
One of the core pillars of academic research is sharing.
By letting other researchers know what you do, ideas are criticized, improved upon and extended. In today’s digital age, sharing is easier than ever before, especially with help from torrents.
One of the leading scientific projects that has adopted BitTorrent is the developing Human Connectome Project, or dHCP for short. The goal of the project is to map the brain wiring of developing babies in the wombs of their mothers.
To do so, a consortium of researchers with expertise ranging from computer science, to MRI physics and clinical medicine, has teamed up across three British institutions: Imperial College London, King’s College London and the University of Oxford.
The collected data is extremely valuable for the neuroscience community and the project has received mainstream press coverage and financial backing from the European Union Research Council. Not only to build the dataset, but also to share it with researchers around the globe. This is where BitTorrent comes in.
Sharing more than 150 GB of data with researchers all over the world can be quite a challenge. Regular HTTP downloads are not really up to the task, and many other transfer options have a high failure rate.
This is why Jonathan Passerat-Palmbach, Research Associate Department of Computing Imperial College London, came up with the idea to embrace BitTorrent instead.
“For me, it was a no-brainer from day one that we couldn’t rely on plain old HTTP to make this dataset available. Our first pilot release is 150GB, and I expect the next ones to reach a couple of TB. Torrents seemed like the de facto solution to share this data with the world’s scientific community.” Passerat-Palmbach says.
The researchers opted to go for the Academic Torrents tracker, which specializes in sharing research data. A torrent with the first batch of images was made available there a few weeks ago.
“This initial release contains 3,629 files accounting for 167.20GB of data. While this figure might not appear extremely large at the moment, it will significantly grow as the project aims to make the data of 1,000 subjects available by the time it has completed.”
The download numbers are nowhere in the region of an average Hollywood blockbuster, of course. Thus far the tracker has registered just 28 downloads. That said, as a superior and open file-transfer protocol, BitTorrent does aid in critical research that helps researchers to discover more about the development of conditions such as ADHD and autism.
Interestingly, the biggest challenges of implementing the torrent solution were not of a technical nature. Most time and effort went into assuring other team members that this was the right solution.
“I had to push for more than a year for the adoption of torrents within the consortium. While my colleagues could understand the potential of the approach and its technical inputs, they remained skeptical as to the feasibility to implement such a solution within an academic context and its reception by the world community.
“However, when the first dataset was put together, amounting to 150GB, it became obvious all the HTTP and FTP fallback plans would not fit our needs,” Passerat-Palmbach adds.
When the consortium finally agreed that BitTorrent was an acceptable way to share the data, local IT staff at the university had to give their seal of approval. Imperial College London doesn’t allow torrent traffic to flow freely across the network, so an exception had to be made.
“Torrents are blocked across the wireless and VPN networks at Imperial. Getting an explicit firewall exception created for our seeding machine was not a walk in the park. It was the first time they were faced with such a situation and we were clearly told that it was not to become the rule.”
Then, finally, the data could be shared around the world.
While BitTorrent is probably the most efficient way to share large files, there were other proprietary solutions that could do the same. However, Passerat-Palmbach preferred not to force other researchers to install “proprietary black boxes” on their machines.
Torrents are free and open, which is more in line with the Open Access approach more academics take today.
Looking back, it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park to share the data via BitTorrent. Passerat-Palmbach was frequently confronted with the piracy stigma torrents have amoung many of his peers, even among younger generations.
“Considering how hard it was to convince my colleagues within the project to actually share this dataset using torrents (‘isn’t it illegal?’ and other kinds of misconceptions…), I think there’s still a lot of work to do to demystify the use of torrents with the public.
“I was even surprised to see that these misconceptions spread out not only to more senior scientists but also to junior researchers who I was expecting to be more tech-aware,” Passerat-Palmbach adds.
That said, the hard work is done now and in the months and years ahead the neuroscience community will have access to Petabytes of important data, with help from BitTorrent. That is definitely worth the effort.
Finally, we thought it was fitting to end with Passerat-Palmbach’s “pledge to seed,” which he shared with his peers. Keep on sharing!
—
On the importance of seeding
Dear fellow scientist,
Thank for you very much for the interest you are showing in the dHCP dataset!
Once you start downloading the dataset, you’ll notice that your torrent client mentions a sharing / seeding ratio. It means that as soon as you start downloading the dataset, you become part of our community of sharers and contribute to making the dataset available to other researchers all around the world!
There’s no reason to be scared! It’s perfectly legal as long as you’re allowed to have a copy of the dataset (that’s the bit you need to forward to your lab’s IT staff if they’re blocking your ports).
You’re actually providing a tremendous contribution to dHCP by spreading the data, so thank you again for that!
With your help, we can make sure this data remains available and can be downloaded relatively fast in the future. Over time, the dataset will grow and your contribution will be more and more important so that each and everyone of you can still obtain the data in the smoothest possible way.
We cannot do it without you. By seeding, you’re actually saying “cheers!” to your peers whom you downloaded your data from. So leave your client open and stay tuned!
All this is made possible thanks to the amazing folks at academictorrents and their infrastructure, so kudos academictorrents!
You can learn more about their project here and get some help to get started with torrent downloading here.
Jonathan Passerat-Palmbach
—
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Watch live: Despite iffy weather, SpaceX will try to re-fly a Dragon
The instantaneous launch window may pose a problem as storms develop.
Enlarge / The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the Dragon spacecraft onboard, is seen at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Saturday. (credit: NASA)
Thunderstorms on Thursday scuttled an attempt by SpaceX to make an historic re-flight of its cargo Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX will now try again Saturday. Because of the orbital dynamics required to reach the International Space Station, today's attempt has an instantaneous launch window, at 5:07pm ET (10:07pm BST).
That may pose a problem because today's weather conditions at Kennedy Space Center are again iffy. Officially, there remains a 60-percent chance of favorable weather at launch time. However, by early Saturday afternoon, cumulus clouds had begun to develop near the launch site, which presages the formation of afternoon showers and thunderstorms—as is common in Florida during the summer.
This particular Dragon first flew to the International Space Station in September 2014 when it delivered nearly 2.5 tons of cargo. That was SpaceX's fourth supply mission to the orbiting laboratory. Saturday's is the company's 11th, and it will carry three tons of supplies to the station. The spacecraft has undergone significant refurbishment and has a new heat shield. Even so, flying the vehicle again represents a major milestone for SpaceX, which has made reusability a hallmark of its efforts to lower the cost of spaceflight.
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Forty years gone: I was 12 when a Led Zeppelin concert turned into a riot
Reliving my first rock concert four decades later.
70,000 fans awaiting the start of the show. (credit: Original Source unknown)
Changes fill my time, baby, that's alright with me
In the midst I think of you, and how it used to be—Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, "Ten Years Gone"
This is the mystery of the quotient, quotient
Upon us all, upon us all a little rain must fall—Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, "The Rain Song"
As we exited the air-conditioned comfort of my mother's 1960-something New Yorker sedan, the humid, 95-degree heat in the parking lot of Tampa Stadium hit us like a ton of bricks. We hardly noticed, though, because we had something far more immediate on our mind. To wit: a band called Led Zeppelin, which was scheduled to play in a few hours for me, my four companions, and 70,000 other rabid fans who shelled out that evening's $10 ticket fee.
When the show started just a little before dark, about four hours later, there was no opening act. There was no announcement, either, just Jimmy Page's 12-string guitar ringing out the opening chord from "The Song Remains the Same," as a laser projected an undulating figure-eight above the stage. The crowd erupted in the most electric celebrations I've ever experienced. It was June 3, 1977. I was just 12 years old, this was my first rock concert, and it was about to change my life forever.
Alas, despite the words "Rain or Shine" printed on the Willie Wonka-style tickets, the concert was quickly interrupted by a thunderstorm considered torrential even for Tampa—a place which rightly or wrongly had long been dubbed the lightening capital of the world. Singer Robert Plant first promised to return in 15 minutes. Later, came an announcement that the show was being postponed. In the confusion, a small riot broke out. Fortunately, my friends and I managed to get out before the bottle throwing and clubbing happened. We only learned of the violence hours later listening to the radio. A few days later, Tampa Mayor William Poe vowed Led Zeppelin would never play the city again.
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MSI Cubi 3 is a fanless mini desktop PC with Intel Kaby Lake
MSI is showing off the latest member of its Cubi line of tiny desktop computers. The MSI Cubi 3 is a small desktop computer with an aluminum case and a fanless design for silent operation. While it’s not the first MSI Cubi computer to feature passive cooling, it is the first fanless model to feature a […]
MSI Cubi 3 is a fanless mini desktop PC with Intel Kaby Lake is a post from: Liliputing
MSI is showing off the latest member of its Cubi line of tiny desktop computers. The MSI Cubi 3 is a small desktop computer with an aluminum case and a fanless design for silent operation. While it’s not the first MSI Cubi computer to feature passive cooling, it is the first fanless model to feature a […]
MSI Cubi 3 is a fanless mini desktop PC with Intel Kaby Lake is a post from: Liliputing
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