Month: April 2018

Galaxy J2 Pro: Samsung zeigt Offline-Smartphone

Kein UMTS, kein LTE, kein Edge und auch kein WLAN. Samsung hat ein Galaxy-Smartphone vorgestellt, mit dem sich das Internet nicht nutzen lässt. Dieser radikale Schritt wird wohl nur wenige Kunden überzeugen. (Samsung, Smartphone)

Kein UMTS, kein LTE, kein Edge und auch kein WLAN. Samsung hat ein Galaxy-Smartphone vorgestellt, mit dem sich das Internet nicht nutzen lässt. Dieser radikale Schritt wird wohl nur wenige Kunden überzeugen. (Samsung, Smartphone)

Nintendo’s new multi-screen patent isn’t just crazy—it might already hide in Switch

Is this vaporware? A new system? Or a soon-to-be Switch feature?

Anybody familiar with Nintendo's hardware history knows better than to expect the company to rest on its laurels. Sure enough, as the company's Switch continues racking up sales, a hint at its next portable system has already arisen in the form of a patent that is too bonkers to ignore.

Patents, after all, can be filed without a company ever intending to make the product, and Nintendo has a history of these—including misleading patents that gave us an incorrect impression of how the Switch might eventually turn out. Take this week's newly published patent, first found by Digital Trends, with a few grains of salt—but we'll forgive you if you start believing that this tracked, multi-touch, multi-screen console might ever exist.

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Google Search Receives Fewer Takedown Notices Than Before

Following years of increases in the volume of takedown requests, the tide appears to be turning at Google search. The number of received DMCA notices for alleged pirate links has dropped 25% compared to 2016. That’s the first downward trend since Google started counting.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

In recent years Google has had to cope with a continuous increase in takedown requests from copyright holders, which target pirate sites in search results.

Just a few years ago the search engine removed ‘only’ a few thousand URLs per day. This has since grown to millions and has kept growing, until recently.

Around a year ago Google received a billion takedown requests a year, and for a while, it stabilized at roughly 20 million requests per week. By October last year, Google search had processed over three billion DMCA requests since it started counting.

After that, it appears that things calmed down a little. Where Google’s weekly takedown chart went up year after year, it’s now trending in a downward direction.

During the past half year, Google received ‘only’ 375 million takedown requests. That translates to roughly 15 million per week or 750 million per year. This is a 25% decrease compared the average in 2016.

Does this mean that copyright holders can no longer find enough pirated content via the search engine? We doubt it. But it’s clear that some of the big reporting agencies are sending in less complaints.

Degban, for example, which was at one point good for more than 10% of the weekly number of DMCA requests, has disappeared completely. Other big players, such as the Mexican anti-piracy outfit APDIF and Remove Your Media, have clearly lowered their volumes.

APDIF’s weekly DMCA volume

Of all the big players, UK Music Group BPI has been most consistent. Their average hasn’t dropped much in recent years, but is certainly not rising either.

It’s too early to tell whether this trend will hold, but according to the numbers we see now, Google will for the first time have a significant decrease in the number of takedown requests this year.

Despite the decrease, Google is under quite a bit of pressure from copyright holders to improve its takedown efforts. Most would like Google to delist pirate site domains entirely.

While the search engine isn’t willing to go that far, it does give a lower ranking to sites for which it receives a large volume of takedown requests. In addition, the company recently started accepting ‘prophylactic’ DMCA requests, for content that is not indexed yet.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

MPAA and RIAA Still Can’t Go After Megaupload

A federal court in Virginia has granted Megaupload’s request to place the cases filed by the RIAA and MPAA on hold for another six months. The lawsuits have been frozen for years now, as the parties are waiting for progress in the criminal case against the defunct file-sharing service.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Well over six years have passed since Megaupload was shutdown, but there is still little progress in the criminal proceedings against its founders.

The United States wants New Zealand to extradite the men but have thus far failed to achieve that goal. Dotcom and his former colleagues are using all legal means to prevent this eventuality and a final conclusion has yet to be reached.

While all parties await the outcome, the criminal case in the United States remains pending. The same goes for the lawsuits filed by the MPAA and RIAA in 2014.

Since the civil cases may influence the criminal proceedings, Megaupload’s legal team previously managed to put these cases on hold, and last week another extension was granted.

Previous extensions didn’t always go this easy. Last year there were concerns that the long delays could result in the destruction of evidence, as some of Megaupload’s hard drives were starting to fail.

However, after the parties agreed on a solution to back-up and restore the files, this is no longer an issue.

“With the preservation order in place, and there being no other objection, Defendant Megaupload hereby moves the Court to enter the attached proposed order, continuing the stay in this case for an additional six months,” Megaupload’s legal team recently informed the court.

Without any objections from the MPAA and RIAA, U.S. District Court Judge Liam O’Grady swiftly granted Megaupload’s request to stay both lawsuits until October this year.

While the US Government hopes to have Dotcom in custody by that time, the entrepreneur has different plans. Following a win at the Human Rights Tribunal in New Zealand, he hopes to put the criminal case behind him soon.

If that indeed happens, the MPAA and RIAA might have their turn.

The latest stay order

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

MPAA and RIAA Still Can’t Go After Megaupload

A federal court in Virginia has granted Megaupload’s request to place the cases filed by the RIAA and MPAA on hold for another six months. The lawsuits have been frozen for years now, as the parties are waiting for progress in the criminal case against the defunct file-sharing service.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Well over six years have passed since Megaupload was shutdown, but there is still little progress in the criminal proceedings against its founders.

The United States wants New Zealand to extradite the men but have thus far failed to achieve that goal. Dotcom and his former colleagues are using all legal means to prevent this eventuality and a final conclusion has yet to be reached.

While all parties await the outcome, the criminal case in the United States remains pending. The same goes for the lawsuits filed by the MPAA and RIAA in 2014.

Since the civil cases may influence the criminal proceedings, Megaupload’s legal team previously managed to put these cases on hold, and last week another extension was granted.

Previous extensions didn’t always go this easy. Last year there were concerns that the long delays could result in the destruction of evidence, as some of Megaupload’s hard drives were starting to fail.

However, after the parties agreed on a solution to back-up and restore the files, this is no longer an issue.

“With the preservation order in place, and there being no other objection, Defendant Megaupload hereby moves the Court to enter the attached proposed order, continuing the stay in this case for an additional six months,” Megaupload’s legal team recently informed the court.

Without any objections from the MPAA and RIAA, U.S. District Court Judge Liam O’Grady swiftly granted Megaupload’s request to stay both lawsuits until October this year.

While the US Government hopes to have Dotcom in custody by that time, the entrepreneur has different plans. Following a win at the Human Rights Tribunal in New Zealand, he hopes to put the criminal case behind him soon.

If that indeed happens, the MPAA and RIAA might have their turn.

The latest stay order

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Google refuses to fix Waze so it won’t route people on 32%-grade road

LA city councilman: “That’s not good corporate citizenship.“

Enlarge / Downtown Los Angeles from the 110 Freeway in 2017. (credit: FG/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)

In the wake of complaints about Waze and similar smartphone traffic apps routing through the smaller streets of Los Angeles, one city councilman has decided to dig in and figure out what he can do about it.

Paul Krekorian recently contacted Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez after Lopez described earlier this month how some apps (notably, Waze) route Angeleno drivers over Baxter Street, which features a 32-percent grade street that dates back to the 19th century.

Numerous apps’ traffic algorithms seem to not take into account that Baxter’s unusual configuration, according to local residents, may result in more auto accidents.

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Are external GPUs for Macs viable in macOS 10.13.4? We tested to find out

Performance doesn’t disappoint, but lack of strong software support does.

Enlarge / A MacBook Pro with an eGPU enclosure and an external monitor. (credit: Samuel Axon)

When Apple released macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 on March 29, fully supported external graphics-card functionality was one of the flagship features.

Most Macs ship with discrete or integrated GPUs—power-saving cousins to the graphics cards found in desktop PCs—that emphasize efficient power and heat management as much as they do performance. External graphics cards (eGPUs) allow users to connect those powerful desktop graphics cards to their computers via the Thunderbolt 3 ports on modern Macs.

That could solve many of the frustrations some users have with the Mac platform, like the lack of an upgrade path for professional-use machines that depend on graphics power and lackluster gaming performance in the latest games.

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Dinosaur Island review: Get Jurassic on your theme park!

Grow your own dinos from frozen DNA in this hot new strategy game.

Enlarge / The player boards. (credit: Charlie Theel)

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.

Fallout, Star Wars, and The Godfather all became board games—why not Jurassic Park? That appears to have been the question asked by Pandasaurus Games, the publisher behind Dinosaur Island.

“Wait a second,” you say, “Dinosaur Island does not actually use the Jurassic Park brand.” That’s true; however, you don’t have to squint hard to imagine Richard Attenborough on the game’s cover or to soak in the overwhelming ‘90s vibes. This may not be a Jurassic Park board game in name, but it’s certainly one in spirit.

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Sega plans to cash in on the mini retro console craze with Mega Drive (Genesis) mini

Nintendo’s made old-school game consoles trendy again with the launch of the popular NES and SNES Classic mini consoles. Now it looks like Sega wants to follow suit. The company, which hasn’t released a major game console in decades, has unveiled a Meg…

Nintendo’s made old-school game consoles trendy again with the launch of the popular NES and SNES Classic mini consoles. Now it looks like Sega wants to follow suit. The company, which hasn’t released a major game console in decades, has unveiled a Mega Drive Mini which Sega plans to launch in Japan later this year […]

The post Sega plans to cash in on the mini retro console craze with Mega Drive (Genesis) mini appeared first on Liliputing.

We’ve found the cells norovirus targets—we just don’t know what they do

Targeting a small population of cells seems to be enough for some big effects.

Enlarge / It's never a good day to be a lab mouse. (credit: Getty | Portland Press Herald )

Norovirus inflames the stomach and/or intestines and causes pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. It is super contagious and kills tens of thousands of people each year. But until now, we did not even know which cells it targets to create all this havoc. A recent study by a public-private consortium working in universities and Genetech has just discovered the elusive cell type (in mice): they're called tuft cells, and they reside in the ilium and colon.

Obviously, norovirus attacks intestinal epithelial cells, the specialized cells that line tubes within the body. But last year, the same group reported that noroviruses would infect only a rare subset of them and not most of their neighbors. But the researchers could not discern what made these select cells so special.

They knew that norovirus used a particular receptor to infect cells and that this receptor is both necessary and sufficient for infection. Oddly, the receptor is an immunoregulator thought to be expressed by blood-forming cells, specifically immune progenitor cells in the bone marrow. These could make their way to the intestines once they mature. But mice that got bone marrow transplants that lacked this receptor were still susceptible to norovirus infection, so that's clearly not the case.

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