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Mehr als fünf Monate nach der Bundestagswahl hat sich die SPD für eine Neuauflage der großen Koalition ausgesprochen. Noch vor Ostern könnte die neue Bundesregierung im Amt sein. (Glasfaser, Internet)
The Pirate Bay regularly suffers downtime, which can lead to a lot of frustration among users. Software developer TechTac hopes to bring an end to this with the release of OfflineBay, a searchable offline archive of TPB’s torrents. The software relies on downloading and updating a dump file manually at the moment, but the developer hopes to replace this with a blockchain in the future.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons
The Pirate Bay is touted as one of the most resilient torrent sites. While it has indeed weathered many storms, occasional downtime is no longer an exception, as became clear again this week.
This can be quite frustrating for users, including software developer TechTac, who came up with a simple but effective solution: OfflineBay.
Simply put, OfflineBay is a multi-platform application that people can install on their local computer. As the same suggests, it helps users to store a copy of all Pirate Bay torrents locally, in case the site does down.
The idea for the tool started a few weeks ago when TechTac realized that he had quite a bit of his monthly bandwidth quota left. However, as The Pirate Bay and other sites were down, he was unable to download anything through the usual channels.
“All of that remaining quota went to waste. Only if I had a tool like OfflineBay at that moment. So I thought ‘Never again’ and ended up developing this tool,” TechTac tells TorrentFreak.
The end result is an application that allows users to search and download Pirate Bay torrents, without having to use the website. Instead, the application searches through the publicly available TPB dump file, which users have to download first.
This means that only those torrents that were available at the time of the latest dump file update will be in the local database as a backup, in case TPB and other major torrent indexes go down.
“OfflineBay is designed to discover torrents when online torrent search providers are not available. Torrents will be available up to the time the last dump file was created,” TechTac says.
The developer realizes that downloading and updating the dump file, which is just under 100 MB in size, is a major drawback. While he considered automating the process, there’s not really an elegant way to implement that at the moment.
This may change in the future though. TechTac will continue to develop the software. While it’s closed source at the moment, open sourcing the code is under consideration for the future.
One of the most interesting plans is to use a blockchain for this project. This would mean that the torrent database is stored and shared among users, without the need to import a dump file.
“I’m planning to move this project to the blockchain so it won’t be depending on the dump file anymore. This is the ultimate goal,” TechTac tells us.
These types of changes require a lot of time though, and that’s proven to be a bottleneck. TechTac is doing all the work on his own right now but he hopes that other developers will join the project.
“Currently, I’m the only one developing this tool. I can’t handle this on my own anymore. Waiting for more developers to get in contact. There’s a lot to discuss,” he says.
The official OfflineBay announcement and related information are available in the Pirate Bay forums over at Suprbay, where it was posted with permission of the Pirate Bay crew.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons
Experiments with tiny ecosystems counteract some effects seen in lab tests.
Enlarge (credit: Klaus Stiefel / Flickr)
The direct chemical effect of our CO2 emissions on our planet’s oceans gets far less attention than the indirect effects caused by global warming. But CO2 lowers the seawater’s pH—known as “ocean acidification”—and this has been shown to be a serious problem for many species. Acidification makes it harder for critters with calcium carbonate shells to grow them, and it even changes the way fish behave.
The majority of studies that have looked at ocean acidification’s impact have fallen into two basic categories: laboratory experiments with carefully isolated conditions and species, and surveys of life at natural CO2 seeps on the seafloor. Each category has drawbacks and advantages. Lab experiments are carefully controlled and can provide unambiguous results. Surveys at natural CO2 seeps can integrate more processes, like species interactions or adaptation over generations. But it’s also true that seeps are surrounded by “normal” ecosystems that could be lending support.
A group of University of Adelaide researchers led by Silvan Goldenberg set out to help fill in the span between those two categories by designing controlled experiments that stepped up the ecological complexity. In 1,800 containers called “mesocosms,” the researchers combined species to form tiny ecosystems. The stars of the show were eight species of fish and shrimp, which swam among a rich supporting cast of over 90 other species—everything from algae and microbes to predators.
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“It’s as if someone walked into my home with a knife and asked me for $35,000.”
Enlarge / This is a screen grab from the forthcoming Clicker Heroes 2. (credit: Playsaurus)
Playsaurus, a small Los Angeles-based game studio that makes Clicker Heroes and the upcoming Clicker Heroes 2, has recently been threatened with a lawsuit if it doesn’t pay $35,000 for a patent licensing fee to cover a patent for “electronic tokens.”
In a Thursday blog post, the CEO of Playsaurus wrote that the company that sent him the letter, GTX Corporation, is a “patent troll.” CEO Thomas Wolfley called GTX’s demands to avoid “costly litigation” over Playsaurus’ use of electronic “Rubies” in its games “meritless.”
In a brief phone interview with Ars on Friday, Wolfley told Ars that receiving the demand letter was disconcerting.
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“It’s as if someone walked into my home with a knife and asked me for $35,000.”
Enlarge / This is a screen grab from the forthcoming Clicker Heroes 2. (credit: Playsaurus)
Playsaurus, a small Los Angeles-based game studio that makes Clicker Heroes and the upcoming Clicker Heroes 2, has recently been threatened with a lawsuit if it doesn’t pay $35,000 for a patent licensing fee to cover a patent for “electronic tokens.”
In a Thursday blog post, the CEO of Playsaurus wrote that the company that sent him the letter, GTX Corporation, is a “patent troll.” CEO Thomas Wolfley called GTX’s demands to avoid “costly litigation” over Playsaurus’ use of electronic “Rubies” in its games “meritless.”
In a brief phone interview with Ars on Friday, Wolfley told Ars that receiving the demand letter was disconcerting.
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Break out the super-glue and the model paint.
Enlarge / A fully painted stormtrooper battalion at last year's Essen game show. (credit: Owen Duffy)
If you’re a Star Wars fan, you may have felt a recent disturbance in the Force. Don’t be alarmed, though—it’s just the upcoming (March 22) release of a new tabletop game from Fantasy Flight Games, and it’s set against the backdrop of the titanic struggle between the heroic Jedi and the villainous Sith Lords.
This is not the publisher’s first foray into the Star Wars franchise, of course. In fact, FFG already offers a dizzying array of games set in a galaxy far, far away. Are you looking for intense, adrenaline-pumping dogfights between squadrons of elite fighter pilots? Then you’ll want to try the X-Wing Miniatures Game. Prefer a grand-scale strategic clash between fleets of colossal ships? Star Wars: Armada has you covered. In the market for a mission-based game that plays like a sci-fi dungeon-crawler? That’ll be Star Wars: Imperial Assault. Then there’s the collectible dice game, the four-hour galaxy-spanning epic, and the three separate tabletop RPGs.
It’s enough to make you wonder whether there’s any aspect of the Galactic Civil War that hasn’t already been exhaustively explored on the tabletop. But, as it happens, there is.
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Statt aus herkömmlichem Kunststoff stellt Lego erstmals einige Elemente aus pflanzlichem Kunststoff her. Den Anfang machen passenderweise Blätter, Büsche und Bäume. (Lego, GreenIT)
Hole made it possible to trick users into double spending and hack smart contracts.
Enlarge (credit: Armin Kübelbeck)
Developers of Ethereum, the world's No. 2 digital currency by market capitalization, have closed a serious security hole that allowed virtually anyone with an Internet connection to manipulate individual users' access to the publicly accessible ledger.
So-called eclipse attacks work by preventing a cryptocurrency user from connecting to honest peers. Attacker-controlled peers then feed the target a manipulated version of the blockchain the entire currency community relies on to reconcile transactions and enforce contractual obligations. Eclipse attacks can be used to trick targets into paying for a good or service more than once and to co-opt the target's computing power to manipulate algorithms that establish crucial user consensus. Because Ethereum supports "smart contracts" that automatically execute transactions when certain conditions in the blockchain are present, Ethereum eclipse attacks can also be used to interfere with those self-enforcing agreements.
Like most cryptocurrencies, Ethereum uses a peer-to-peer mechanism that compiles input from individual users into an authoritative blockchain. In 2015 and again in 2016, separate research teams devised eclipse attacks against Bitcoin that exploited P2P weaknesses. Both were relatively hard to pull off. The 2015 attack required a botnet or a small ISP that controlled thousands of devices, while the 2016 attack relied on the control of huge chunks of Internet addresses through a technique known as border gateway protocol hijacking. The demands made it likely that both attacks could be carried out only by sophisticated and well-resourced hackers.
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Fahrverbote könnten wesentlich mehr Dieselautos betreffen als bislang erwartet. Die Bundesregierung befürchtet laut einem Medienbericht, dass nur Wagen mit der ganz neuen Schadstoffklasse 6d sicher sind. (Auto, Technologie)
Fahrverbote könnten wesentlich mehr Dieselautos betreffen als bislang erwartet. Die Bundesregierung befürchtet laut einem Medienbericht, dass nur Wagen mit der ganz neuen Schadstoffklasse 6d sicher sind. (Auto, Technologie) Rightsholders and ISPs in Belgium have agreed to present a list of 450 domains to a judge alongside allegations they facilitate illegal downloading. With the ISPs keen to assist but without accepting any liability, it appears that the collaborative process will lead to the blocking of the domains while avoiding complex and costly legal proceedings.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons
While site-blocking on copyright infringement grounds is now widespread, in most countries it requires intervention from the courts.
The process nearly always involves rightsholders grouping together with claims that customers of ISPs are infringing their rights by using ‘pirate’ sites to obtain movies, TV shows and music. As such, it isn’t pirate sites that are targeted by rightsholder legal action, but the ISPs themselves.
Of course, none of the ISPs targeted are breaking the law by providing access to the sites. However, the demands for a blocking injunction frame the ISPs as the wrong-doers, even if there is an underlying understanding that the pirate sites themselves are the issue. For this reason, ISPs around the world have regularly found themselves in an adversarial process.
In the Netherlands, for example, ISPs took their fight to the highest court in Europe to avoid blocking but will almost certainly fail after spending large sums of money. In others, such as the UK where the blocking process has matured, ISPs rarely object to anything, smoothing the process for both them and the rightsholders.
With the knowledge that site-blocking injunctions are likely to be granted by national courts in Europe, rightsholders and ISPs in Belgium now appear to be taking a collaborative approach. Sites have been blocked in the country before but future blocking efforts will be much easier to implement if a case before the Commercial Court of Brussels runs to plan.
It involves the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA) on one side and ISPs Proximus, Telenet and VOO on the other. Rather than squabbling over the details, it appears that the parties will jointly present a list of 33 websites and 450 domain names to a judge, alongside claims that they facilitate the illegal downloading of copyrighted material.
According to a report from L’Echo (paywall), the companies hope to avoid complex and costly legal proceedings by working together and accepting the inevitability of a blocking injunction.
The case has been running for a year already but during a hearing before the Commercial Court of Brussels this week, Benoît Michaux, lawyer for the Belgian Entertainment Association, explained the new approach.
“The European legislator has put in place a mechanism that allows a national judge to request injunctions to order the providers to block access to the websites in question”, Michaux said.
After being presented to the Court, the list of sites and domains will be assessed to determine whether they’re acting illegally. Michaux said that the parties have settled on a common approach and have been able to identify “reasonable measures” that can be ordered by the Court that are consistent with case law of the European Court of Justice.
“This joint request is a little unusual, things are changing, there is a certain maturation of minds, we realize, from all sides, that we must tackle the problem of piracy by blocking measures. There is a common vision on what to do and how to handle piracy,” he said.
While the ISPs are clearly on a path of cooperation, L’Echo reports that concerns over possible breaches of the E-Commerce Directive mean that the ISPs don’t want to take action against the sites themselves without being ordered to do so by the Court.
“The responsible actors want to demonstrate that it is possible to stop piracy through procedural law,” says Benoît Van Asbroeck, lawyer for Proximus and Telenet.
The Court is expected to hand down its judgment within a month. Given the cooperation on all sides, it’s likely to be in favor of mass site-blocking.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons
Mehr als fünf Monate nach der Bundestagswahl hat sich die SPD für eine Neuauflage der großen Koalition ausgesprochen. Noch vor Ostern könnte die neue Bundesregierung im Amt sein. (
Statt aus herkömmlichem Kunststoff stellt Lego erstmals einige Elemente aus pflanzlichem Kunststoff her. Den Anfang machen passenderweise Blätter, Büsche und Bäume. (
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