Mobilität: Elektroautos deutscher Start-ups fordern Autobauer heraus

Die Entwicklung eines neuen Autos ist teuer und langwierig. Deswegen hatten Newcomer in der Branche bislang schlechte Karten. Doch die Autoindustrie wandelt sich rasant. Neugründungen wollen die etablierten Hersteller herausfordern. (Elektroauto, Tesla)

Die Entwicklung eines neuen Autos ist teuer und langwierig. Deswegen hatten Newcomer in der Branche bislang schlechte Karten. Doch die Autoindustrie wandelt sich rasant. Neugründungen wollen die etablierten Hersteller herausfordern. (Elektroauto, Tesla)

War for the Planet of the Apes is a genuinely satisfying morality tale

The righteous apes are back, for great justice.

Enlarge / Caesar is on a revenge mission to destroy the Colonel. Will his animal instincts make him no better than those damn, dirty humans? (credit: 20th Century Fox)

War for the Planet of the Apes is definitely the most fable-like movie in the rebooted Apes trilogy, with its starkly defined war of good apes against evil humans. But it's also the most character-driven story too. With War, it becomes clear that this trilogy has actually been the biography of one person, Caesar, who grew from humble origins as a lab animal to become one of Earth's greatest heroes.

There is something cheesy yet stirringly genuine about the way War lionizes its main character, making him both noble and relatable. Partly this comes down to Andy Serkis, the world's first truly brilliant mocap actor, who fills Caesar's face with thoughtful, grim determination. But it's also about a simple design choice, which was to make the uplifted apes' eyes transform into human eyes. When the camera looks at Caesar, we can't help but see the face of a person, despite the fur and thick brow ridges.

A fascinating character study

This is particularly important in War, where the humans and apes finally switch roles. One of the signature details in the original original series is that many humans in the far future have lost the ability to speak. Flung nearly 2,000 years into the future, astronaut Charlton Heston finds wild humans living like apes once did. In War, we see how this situation came about.

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

GoMovies Moves to GoStream.is and Evades Google ‘Ban’

The popular movie streaming site Gomovies has relocated to a new domain name once again. Going forward, the site will be operating from gostream.is and will no longer list any infringing links on the homepage. The change comes right after the site’s previous homepage was removed from Google following a takedown notice.

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

Pirate video streaming sites are booming. Their relative ease of use through on-demand viewing makes them a viable alternative to P2P file-sharing, which traditionally dominated the piracy arena.

The popular movie streaming sites GoMovies, formerly known as 123movies, is one of the most-used streaming sites. While it’s built a steady userbase of millions of users over the past year, the site’s home keeps changing.

The latest move came this week. Going forward, the site will be active from GoStream.is, operating from the Icelandic gostream.is domain name.

While the site hasn’t officially commented on the reason for the move, on Twitter a site representative mentioned a Google ‘penalty’ as the main driver behind the recent change.

Penalized

When we looked at the issue more closely, we found that it’s not so much a penalty, but rather a response to a DMCA takedown request.

Earlier this week the site’s homepage was removed from Google’s search engine following a takedown notice from Warner Bros. This made it harder for users to find the site through Google, as various knockoffs were ranked higher in the search results for the “Gomovies” keyword.

In addition to relocating to a new domain name, the site has also changed the look of its homepage. Instead of a page filled with the most popular movies and TV-shows, it now lists a basic search box.

New GoMovies homepage

The homepage change is likely a response to Google’s search engine removal as well. The previous GoMovies domain was targeted by Warner Bros. because it listed a link to a pirated movie, but such links are no longer present on the new homepage.

That said, users who prefer the old look can still access it with a single click, which is prominently mentioned on the site.

Despite the domain name change, the GoMovies brand hasn’t changed. The logo and all other references to the site’s name remain intact. Confusingly, people who search for GoMovies on Google still won’t see the Gostream.is URL in the top results, but perhaps that will change in the future.

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

Dealmaster: The best Amazon Prime Day deals that are still alive

A $399 Oculus Rift VR Bundle, a $10 Credit on Gift Card Reloads, and 40% off Audible.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, the Dealmaster is back with a big bag of deals for your weekend consideration. We're still in post-Amazon Prime Day mode, so here's the best of what is still live. There's a $399 Oculus Rift VR Bundle, $10 Amazon Credit on Gift Card Reloads, and 40 percent off Audible.

Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

Featured

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

US border agents: We won’t search data “located solely on remote servers”

What does that mean in practice? CBP isn’t saying for now.

Enlarge / International air travelers are processed by US Customs and Border Protection agents upon arrival to Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on December 10, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (credit: David McNew/Getty Images)

In a new letter, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has answered some questions posed months ago by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) about the agency’s policies when it comes to searches of digital devices at the border. However, that letter appears to have raised even more questions.

As Ars reported previously, there is a very broad exception to the Fourth Amendment at the border that allows officials to conduct warrantless searches. If your device is locked or encrypted and you refuse to assist agents’ attempts to open it, the device can be seized.

The recently published letter from CBP reiterated what federal officials have said before: electronic border searches are extremely rare, and the government claims the legal authority to compel assistance to open a device (including forcing someone to hand over their password). But it also distinguishes between data held on the phone and data held in the cloud.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

How to use an SD card with Amazon’s Fire tablets

Every tablet Amazon Fire tablet released in the past few years has featured a microSD card slot, which is a nice thing to have if you’re using a tablet that may have as little as 8GB of built-in storage. You can pick up just about any Class 10 o…

Every tablet Amazon Fire tablet released in the past few years has featured a microSD card slot, which is a nice thing to have if you’re using a tablet that may have as little as 8GB of built-in storage. You can pick up just about any Class 10 or UHS microSD card to add up […]

The post How to use an SD card with Amazon’s Fire tablets appeared first on Liliputing.

Juicero to cut staff, drop price of its juice bag presser below $200

Current price “not a realistic way for us to fulfill our mission,” CEO allegedly writes.

Enlarge (credit: Juicero)

According to a letter to employees sent today, Juicero CEO Jeff Dunn allegedly called for a “strategic shift” at the company that would involve cutting 25 percent of staff and dropping the price of the press to under $200.

Juicero found itself in the Silicon Valley limelight in April, when Bloomberg reporters got ahold of one of the company’s high-end presses and found that they could, by hand, squeeze a considerable amount of juice out of the proprietary juice bags that are designed to work with the appliance. That left many to question what the juicer, which started at $700 and was later reduced to $400, was really doing. It couldn’t press any fruits or vegetables other than what came in the juice bags (which are delivered to customers’ doors for $5-$7 a pouch). And if you buy into the idea that cold-pressed juice is somehow healthier for you than juice from a centrifugal blender (a claim for which there is very little evidence), then that purpose seemed to be thwarted as well—the produce in several bags seemed to already be in a pulp form.

After much ridicule, Juicero CEO Jeff Dunn defended his company’s product, saying that the elaborately-engineered machine delivered more consistent pouch presses and prevented users from accidentally pressing expired juice packs by reading a barcode on the pack’s label.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

First insider build of Windows Server arrives with new virtualization features

Nano Server is now solely a container option, making it smaller and lighter.

Enlarge / Server administrator kaiju hates user password reset requests. (credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment America (CC))

Back in May, Microsoft announced that Windows Server would be joining the Windows Insider Program. Late last night, the first preview release of Windows Server was published.

The biggest areas of improvement in the new build are around virtualization and containers. The preview allows exposing more of the underlying hardware capabilities to virtual machines, with support for virtualized non-volatile memory and virtualized power/battery status. For both containers and virtual machines, networking capabilities have been enhanced to enable a wider range of virtual network capabilities with greater performance.

The focus on containerization has also seen the Nano Server deployment of Windows Server change. Presently, Nano Server is still a full operating system, but with the Redstone 3 release of Windows later this year, that's going to change. It's going to be a strictly container-only deployment. Upgrading and maintaining Nano Server will be done through updating the container image. This has enabled Microsoft to strip down the Nano Server installation. It no longer requires, for example, the Windows servicing stack. Because it's upgraded simply by replacing the image, Nano Server no longer needs to use Windows Update itself. The result is a 70 percent reduction in the image's footprint.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ajit Pai not concerned about number of pro-net neutrality comments

Two million new pro-net neutrality comments claimed by “Day of Action” organizers.

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai speaks during the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas on April 25, 2017. (credit: Getty Images | Ethan Miller )

One day after a large protest of his plan to gut net neutrality rules, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai was asked if the number of pro-net neutrality comments submitted to the FCC might cause a change in course.

In response, Pai maintained his stance that the number of comments is not as important as the content of those comments.

"As I said previously, the raw number is not as important as the substantive comments that are in the record," Pai said at a press conference following yesterday's monthly FCC meeting.

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments