October 2017 – Page 72 – news.buyenne.com

Studying human tumors in mice may end up being misleading

Tumors evolve to adapt to their new environment: a mouse.

Cancer is, unfortunately, governed by the same evolutionary rules that drive life itself. Cells in tumors are essentially competing to see which can divide the fastest. This competition drives them to pick up new mutations that can help them divide faster, survive immune attack, resist drugs, and expand to new areas of the body.

We can tell this by looking at the genetic changes that occur as tumors progress. Over time, we can trace the appearance of new mutations that confer abilities that are, from cancer's perspective, useful for tumor cells.

Now, a new study suggests that an unfortunate side effect of these evolutionary changes is that human tumors are really difficult to study. Whether the tumor cells are put in a culture dish or grown in mice, they evolve changes that help them grow in this new environment. And some of these changes influence how the tumor cells respond to drugs.

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Soziales Netzwerk: Facebook ermöglicht Essensbestellungen

Für Nutzer in den USA hat Facebook die Möglichkeit freigeschaltet, Essen direkt über die Android- und iOS-App sowie die Desktop-Seite des sozialen Netzwerks zu bestellen. Dabei werden nahe Restaurants, die Lieferdienste unterstützen, und Lieferketten a…

Tesla fires hundreds of workers

Higher-performing workers were rewarded with raises, Tesla says.

Tesla has a reputation as a demanding place to work, and the company lived up to its reputation this week, as Tesla fired hundreds of workers. The San Jose Mercury News estimates that between 400 and 700 workers were let go, based on employee reports.

“Like all companies, Tesla conducts an annual performance review," a Tesla spokesman told Ars. "This includes both constructive feedback and recognition of top performers with additional compensation. As with any company, especially one of over 33,000 employees, performance reviews also occasionally result in employee departures. Tesla is continuing to grow and hire new employees around the world.”

Tesla told the Mercury News that most of the departures were in administrative and sales positions, outside of manufacturing. The company declined to give the overall number of employees let go.

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Ten technologies that might change the world: A review of Soonish

New pop-sci book from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal creators is occasionally hilarious.

I only read three comics regularly, and one of those is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC). It is a comic that is clever and funny—even educational on occasion. I think it is safe to call me a fan. So, I was pretty excited to hear that Katy and Zach Weinersmith had decided to cowrite a book. Even better, it was a book about science.

Soonish is a not a single story, instead, it is 10 short stories. Pulling out the crystal ball, the Weinersmiths have chosen 10 areas that many hope will become actual, factual things that exist outside of our head or the lab. Each chapter is split into four parts: the first part tells us what the thing—brain computer interface, for instance—is, how it might be put together, and why we don't already have one. The second part asks the eternal question: what could possibly go wrong? And, the third prognosticates on how the world will be changed by the thing. The last part is a funny anecdote about some of their encounters while researching the chapter.

Now, you may or may not agree with the Weinersmiths' choices—space elevators? Not something I'd pick as ever being a thing—but their research is what brings their choices to life. They've spent a lot of time buried under papers and talking to scientists. You can sort of feel the weight of the research pressing down on you as you read it. Not in a bad way—more like an extra blanket on a cold night.

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Android: Einige Root-User können Netflix-App wieder laden

Seit Mai 2017 können Root-User die Netflix-App nicht mehr aus Googles Play Store laden – seit einigen Tagen taucht die App aber wieder bei manchem betroffenen Nutzer auf. Nicht alle Root-Nutzer sehen die Anwendung aber, die Hintergründe der erneuten Ve…

Seit Mai 2017 können Root-User die Netflix-App nicht mehr aus Googles Play Store laden - seit einigen Tagen taucht die App aber wieder bei manchem betroffenen Nutzer auf. Nicht alle Root-Nutzer sehen die Anwendung aber, die Hintergründe der erneuten Verfügbarkeit bleiben unklar. (Netflix, Google)

If you take a lot of photos, the original Pixel has a perk the Pixel 2 does not

Google’s Pixel smartphones have some of the best cameras available on any phone. The 2016 model was one of the best available at the time… and the 2017 model is said to have an even better camera. If you use those cameras to snap a lot of p…

If you take a lot of photos, the original Pixel has a perk the Pixel 2 does not is a post from: Liliputing

30.000 US-Dollar Schaden: Admin wegen Sabotage nach Kündigung verurteilt

Nach Meinungsverschiedenheiten hatten sich ein Systemadministrator und sein Arbeitgeber getrennt. Das hielt den Admin aber nicht davon ab, noch zahlreiche Dateien und Konten zu löschen oder deren Passwörter zu ändern. Dafür wurde der US-Amerikaner nun …

Twilight Imperium v4 review: All-day sci-fi gaming just got better

New edition of classic board game slims down and evolves in all the right ways.

Ever since its first edition was released almost 20 years ago, Twilight Imperium has been one of the most massive propositions in tabletop gaming. Over the years, it has only grown bigger with expansions and revisions. A flawed work of folly and genius, its absolutely titanic third edition (known as TI3) is loved and feared in equal amounts, a base game that comes in a box that’s two feet long and nearly a foot across. Confused beginners need 10 or more hours to play.

The game’s proposition is simple, but the execution is fearsomely complex. Between four and eight players—but ideally six—build a galaxy and lead alien races who want to conquer it. Along the way, you research military technologies, colonize planets, subvert the galactic senate, and smash dozens of small plastic space ships together in generally futile attempts at becoming EMPEROR of SPACE. Think of it as the cardboard version of classic video games like Master Of Orion or Homeworld. When it’s good—with six people who know what they’re doing—Twilight Imperium is one of the best games there is. When it’s bad—after seven hours with only two people left who can possibly win and everyone else going through the motions out of politeness—it's horrid.

Including the many options introduced in two expansion packs, which are each the price and size of most other premium standalone games, TI3 had begun to teeter under the weight of its ambition. It is after all quite hard to gather six or eight people around a table when players can be knocked from contention a couple of hours into a game that lasts all day. Combine that with roughly 80 pages of rules and hundreds of cards that break them—sometimes in ill-defined ways—and you have a game in which players are battling against each other’s mental and physical stamina as much as against any attack ships off the shoulder of Orion. It was always designed to be too much, but it quickly got, like, too too much.

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Qualcomm: Klage gegen iPhone-Produktion und Verkauf in China

Qualcomm hat in China Klage gegen Apple eingereicht und will die Produktion sowie den Verkauf von iPhones im weltweit attraktivsten Markt stoppen. Damit spitzt sich der Konflikt zwischen den beiden Unternehmen weiter zu. (Apple, Qualcomm)

Popular Zer0day Torrent Tracker Taken Offline By Mass Copyright Complaint

A popular content-neutral torrent tracker has been forced offline following pressure from an anti-piracy outfit. Zer0day was tracking more than five million peers earlier this month but a mass complaint from SCPP, an outfit that represents Warner, Universal, Sony and thousands of others, caused its host to terminate service.

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

In January 2016, a BitTorrent enthusiast decided to launch a stand-alone tracker, purely for fun.

The Zer0day platform, which hosts no torrents, is a tracker in the purest sense, directing traffic between peers, no matter what content is involved and no matter where people are in the world.

With this type of tracker in short supply, it was soon utilized by The Pirate Bay and the now-defunct ExtraTorrent. By August 2016, it was tracking almost four million peers and a million torrents, a considerable contribution to the BitTorrent ecosystem.

After handling many ups and downs associated with a service of this type, the tracker eventually made it to the end of 2016 intact. This year it grew further still and by the end of September was tracking an impressive 5.5 million peers spread over 1.2 million torrents. Soon after, however, the tracker disappeared from the Internet without warning.

In an effort to find out what had happened, TorrentFreak contacted Zer0day’s operator who told us a familiar story. Without any warning at all, the site’s host pulled the plug on the service, despite having been paid 180 euros for hosting just a week earlier.

“We’re hereby informing you of the termination of your dedicated server due to a breach of our terms of service,” the host informed Zer0day.

“Hosting trackers on our servers that distribute infringing and copyrighted content is prohibited. This server was found to distribute such content. Should we identify additional similar activity in your services, we will be forced to close your account.”

While hosts tend not to worry too much about what their customers are doing, this one had just received a particularly lengthy complaint. Sent by the head of anti-piracy at French collecting society SCPP, it laid out the group’s problems with the Zer0day tracker.

“SCPP has been responsible for the collective management and protection of sound recordings and music videos producers’ rights since 1985. SCPP counts more than 2,600 members including the majority of independent French producers, in addition to independent European producers, and the major international companies: Sony, Universal and Warner,” the complaints reads.

“SCPP administers a catalog of 7,200,000 sound tracks and 77,000 music videos. SCPP is empowered by its members to take legal action in order to put an end to any infringements of the producers’ rights set out in Article L335-4 of the French Intellectual Property Code…..punishable by a three-year prison sentence or a fine of €300,000.”

Noting that it works on behalf of a number of labels and distributors including BMG, Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music and others, SCPP listed countless dozens of albums under its protection, each allegedly tracked by the Zer0day platform.

“It has come to our attention that these music albums are illegally being communicated to the public (made available for download) by various users of the BitTorrent-Network,” the complaint reads.

Noting that Zer0day is involved in the process, the anti-piracy outfit presented dozens of hash codes relating to protected works, demanding that the site stop facilitation of infringement on each and every one of them.

“We have proof that your tracker udp://tracker.zer0day.to:1337/announce provided peers of the BitTorrent-Network with information regarding these torrents, to be specific IP Addresses of peers that were offering without authorization the full albums for download, and that this information enabled peers to download files that contain the sound recordings to which our members producers have the exclusive rights.

“These sound recordings are thus being illegally communicated to the public, and your tracker is enabling the seeders to do so.”

Rather than take the hashes down from the tracker, SCPP actually demanded that Zer0day create a permanent blacklist within 24 hours, to ensure the corresponding torrents wouldn’t be tracked again.

“You should understand that this letter constitutes a notice to you that you may be liable for the infringing activity occurring on your service. In addition, if you ignore this notice, you may also be liable for any resulting infringement,” the complaint added.

But despite all the threats, SCPP didn’t receive the response they’d demanded since the operator of the site refused to take any action.

“Obviously, ‘info hashes’ are not copyrightable nor point to specific copyrighted content, or even have any meaning. Further, I cannot verify that request strings parameters (‘info hashes’) you sent me contain copyrighted material,” he told SCPP.

“Like the website says; for content removal kindly ask the indexing site to remove the listing and the .torrent file. Also, tracker software does not have an option to block request strings parameters (‘info hashes’).”

The net effect of non-compliance with SCPP was fairly dramatic and swift. Zer0day’s host took down the whole tracker instead and currently it remains offline. Whether it reappears depends on the site’s operator finding a suitable web host, but at the moment he says he has no idea where one will appear from.

“Currently I’m searching for some virtual private server as a temporary home for the tracker,” he concludes.

As mentioned in an earlier article detailing the problems sites like Zer0day.to face, trackers aren’t absolutely essential for the functioning of BitTorrent transfers. Nevertheless, their existence certainly improves matters for file-sharers so when they go down, millions can be affected.

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