Month: September 2017

Die Moto-G4-Smartphones von Lenovo vertragen sich nicht mit Googles Play-Protect-Dienst. Ist dieser eingeschaltet, versagen die Bluetooth-Funktionen der Geräte. (Moto G, Smartphone)

Planet Computers will den PDA Psion zurückbringen - die Crowdfunding-Kampagne war ein großer Erfolg. Die Auslieferung des Geräts mit Dual-Boot-Option nähert sich, nun hat der Hersteller ein erstes Vorserienmodell präsentiert. (Crowdfunding, Smartphone)

Der jahrelange Streit um die Urheberrechte an einem Affen-Selfie ist beigelegt. Der fragwürdige Vergleich verhindert wohl eine teure Niederlage für die umstrittene Tierschutzorganisation Peta. (Wikipedia, Urheberrecht)

Gleich zwei neue Fire-TV-Modelle plant Amazon. Vorab sind erste Details dazu bekanntgeworden. Das Topmodell bietet zusätzlich alle Funktionen eines Echo Dot und es ist ein neues Mittelklassemodell oberhalb des Fire TV Sticks mit 4K- und HDR-Unterstützung geplant. (Fire TV, Amazon)

Die aktuelle Version von iOS bringt Verbesserungen, die Nutzer vor dem unerwünschten Auslesen des iPhone-Speichers schützen sollen. Gerade Polizeibehörden könnten sich über die Funktion ärgern. (iPhone, Verschlüsselung)

SceneAccess (ScT) has been a respected and well-connected private BitTorrent tracker for more than a decade, but a few hours ago it closed its doors.

The operators of the tracker, which recently stopped enforcing a mandatory share ratio, had been complaining about a lack of financial support for a while.

“As we stand now, we have NO money left to pay our bills and the lights WILL go out,” one of the staffers wrote earlier this year, urging the site’s members to chip in to help the site stay online.

Apparently, these frequent donation reminders were unsuccessful. Today, members of the tracker, some of which have been with the site for more than tens years, are greeted by a farewell notice.

“After putting a decade of blood, sweat and tears – it is time to throw in the towel. It is time for us to close this chapter…” it reads, thanking all donors who helped the site over the years.

“As times change, so do peoples priorities and without continued economical support from the community, it is impossible to run a site of this size. It’s been a pleasure for all of us to serve you with pride and honor.”

SceneAccess shuts down

SceneAccess has seen its fair share of trouble over the years. The site was raided in its early days, forced by anti-piracy group BREIN to switch hosts, DDoSed on several occasions, and suffered a leak of user data, among other things.

While it recovered from all these events, a lack of financial support now means that the end has finally come.

The tracker is not the only site to run low on donations. Many trackers, including several of the big players, have complained about the same issue in recent years.

While there may always be additional factors in play when a site shuts down, it is clear that SceneAccess is not coming back, unless there is some magical turnaround. This means that its users have to find a new home, wherever that may be.

“Thank you for 11 amazing years. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors,” SCC concludes.

Another one bites the dust…

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

Fifa 18 erscheint erst im September, deutlich früher bringt Konami seine Neuauflage von PES heraus - und verspricht für PES 2018 recht großmundig mehr Neuerungen als in jedem anderen PES-Titel der vergangenen zehn Jahre. Viele davon sind allerdings eher im Detail versteckt als offensichtlich. (Fifa, Server)

Einer der Betreiber des aktiven Streamingportals Kinox.to hat sich der Polizei gestellt. Er war seit fast drei Jahren auf der Flucht. (Kino.to, Internet)

The company behind the massively popular WordPress platform has also been subject to a massive spike in received DMCA take down notices, and unfortunately, most of them appears to be bogus.

Automattic, the makers of WordPress, has previously called for the introduction of statutory damages for sending incomplete or false DMCA notices, anticipating the future headache of service providers who are forced to deal with thousands of notices, most of which are created by automated bots.

Their apprehension at that time now appears to have merit, as the company reported a huge surge in the number of DMCA notices it has received the first half of 2017, double that from the same period a year ago.

Worst of all, 78% of these notices were rejected on the grounds of them being incomplete, or in many cases, abusive of the DMCA legislation used to protect copyrighted works online.

Despite the number of notices more than doubling, the number of legitimate notices actually dropped. This is because Automattic rejected "only" 42% of notices last year, compared to 78% this year.

Fortunately for users of Automattic's services, including the hosted WordPress platform, the company still goes through each and every take-down request (that's 9,273 of them, for the first half of 2017 alone) manually to weed out the bad ones. Not all service providers do this, and instead use automated means to process these requests and remove content, leading to many cases of false positives.

The high number of invalid DMCA requests are due to the increasing use of automated bots to locate and compile these requests, and also increasingly, the abusive use of the DMCA take-down process to silence critics or stifle competition.

[via TorrentFreak]

HDR, 4K und 200-Zoll-Diagonale: Sonys neuer 4K-Beamer kann auf dem Papier viele Funktionen vorweisen - für einen geringeren Preis als üblich. Trotzdem könnten einige Kunden sich an der Helligkeit stören. (Sony, Digitalkino)