BeA: Das Anwaltspostfach kommt mit Sicherheitslücken

Das besondere elektronische Anwaltspostfach (BeA) soll am heutigen Montag wieder starten. Es war seit Dezember vergangenen Jahres aufgrund zahlreicher Sicherheitslücken offline. Nach wie vor sind viele Fragen in Sachen Sicherheit ungeklärt. Von Hanno B…

Das besondere elektronische Anwaltspostfach (BeA) soll am heutigen Montag wieder starten. Es war seit Dezember vergangenen Jahres aufgrund zahlreicher Sicherheitslücken offline. Nach wie vor sind viele Fragen in Sachen Sicherheit ungeklärt. Von Hanno Böck (BeA, Verschlüsselung)

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 09/03/18

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. ‘Ocean’s Eight’ tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Deadpool 2′. ‘Hereditary ‘ completes the top three.

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

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Ocean’s Eight is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:
Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1 (2) Ocean’s Eight 6.3 / trailer
2 (1) Deadpool 2 8.0 / trailer
3 (5) Hereditary 8.7 / trailer
4 (3) Avengers: Infinity War 8.7 / trailer
5 (…) Reprisal 4.4 / trailer
6 (4) Upgrade 7.7 / trailer
7 (8) Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (subbed HDRip) 6.5 / trailer
8 (…) Superfly 4.9 / trailer
9 (10) Rampage 6.3 / trailer
10 (9) Skyscraper (subbed HDRip) 6.1 / trailer

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

Megaboom und Boom 2: Logitech entfernt Funktionen bei Ultimate-Ears-Lautsprechern

Besitzer eines Boom 2 oder Megaboom zeigen sich in Kommentaren verärgert. Der Grund liegt darin, dass Logitech aus den Ultimate-Ears-Lautsprechern Funktionen entfernt hat. Amazons Alexa ist weg, aber auch die Weckerfunktionen sowie die Ferneinschaltung…

Besitzer eines Boom 2 oder Megaboom zeigen sich in Kommentaren verärgert. Der Grund liegt darin, dass Logitech aus den Ultimate-Ears-Lautsprechern Funktionen entfernt hat. Amazons Alexa ist weg, aber auch die Weckerfunktionen sowie die Ferneinschaltung wurden entfernt. (Logitech, Amazon)

Mobile-Games-Auslese: Städtebau und Lebenssimulation für unterwegs

Pocket City ist ein Aufbauspiel in der Art von Sim City für unterwegs, außerdem gibt es ein Spiel rund um die Mitte eines Donuts und ein Leben in einer Stunde: Bei aktuellen Mobile Games ist Abwechslung garantiert. Von Rainer Sigl (Mobile Games, Spiele…

Pocket City ist ein Aufbauspiel in der Art von Sim City für unterwegs, außerdem gibt es ein Spiel rund um die Mitte eines Donuts und ein Leben in einer Stunde: Bei aktuellen Mobile Games ist Abwechslung garantiert. Von Rainer Sigl (Mobile Games, Spieletest)

Bethesda im Interview: “Gute Spielideen sind Massenware”

Ideen für neue Spiele wie Starfield, die langen Wartezeiten auf ein neues The Elder Scrolls und der Onlinemodus von Fallout 76: Golem.de hat mit Bethesda-Marketingchef Pete Hines gesprochen. Ein Interview von Peter Steinlechner (Bethesda, Interview)

Ideen für neue Spiele wie Starfield, die langen Wartezeiten auf ein neues The Elder Scrolls und der Onlinemodus von Fallout 76: Golem.de hat mit Bethesda-Marketingchef Pete Hines gesprochen. Ein Interview von Peter Steinlechner (Bethesda, Interview)

Hollywood Studios Flag Their IMDb Listings as “Pirate” Links

A rather persistent bug in the takedown code of a major reporting agency has caused an embarrassing situation for several Hollywood studios. For quite some time now, companies including Sony Pictures Television and Columbia Pictures have been inadvertently asking Google to remove the IMDb listings of their own work.

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

Every single day, largely automated bots scour the web for references to pirated content.

These links are then reported to various online services, such as Google, requesting the operators to remove the allegedly infringing content.

This works fine, most of the time. But, in common with their human counterparts, these bots aren’t perfect. This was made painfully visible last month when Topple Track had to disable its reporting tool after it triggered a wave of faulty takedown notices.

That was not an isolated incident though. None of these takedown tools are perfect.

Over the past few weeks, we noticed another worrying trend. Suddenly, Google started to receive a lot of DMCA notices for the Internet Movie Database, with the majority of these requests coming from the UK-based reporting agency Entura International.

Since it’s unlikely that the movie site, which has been operating legally for 27 years, had suddenly gone rogue, something else must be up.

We decided to take a closer look at the reports in question, which were sent on behalf of well-known companies including Columbia Pictures, National Geographic, and Sony Pictures Television. Most of the links in these notices indeed reference classic pirate sites.

Good notice

The IMDB links are mostly used as a reference to the original content. However, it appears that due to a bug in the system the IMDb links move to the “infringing content” field when there are no pirate links to report, as shown below.

Bad notice

This is a rather obvious bug. However, after several weeks it has yet to be corrected. As a result, Google has been asked dozens of times to remove legitimate IMDb URLs from its search results.

TorrentFreak reached out to Entura to report this issue, and request a comment, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.

Google, meanwhile, has widely put IMDb on its whitelist. This means that none of the inaccurately reported links have been removed. However, a smaller or relatively unknown site may not be that lucky, when it comes to these type of mistakes.

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

There’s now an even more precise “recipe” for blowing the perfect bubble

Understanding these dynamics could improve processing of many consumer products.

Article intro image

Enlarge / Scientists have long been fascinated with the math and physics of bubbles. (credit: Tim Robberts/Getty Images)

A team of mathematicians has devised the most precise recipe yet for blowing perfect bubbles, and it's not just for fun and frolics. Achieving a better understanding of the dynamics at work could lead to more efficient industrial production of commercial sprays and foams, like shaving cream or Reddi-Wip—pretty much anything that has drops or bubbles in it.

Bubbles have long been serious science. Back in the 1800s, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau outlined four basic laws of surface tension that determine the structure of soapy films. Surface tension is why bubbles are round; that shape has the least surface area for a given volume, so it requires the least energy to maintain. (As gravity pulls the liquid downward in a process known as coarsening, the shape starts to look more like a soccer ball rather than a perfect sphere.) American botanist Edwin Matzke used to build foams by hand in his lab in the 1940s, bubble by bubble, the better to examine their structure.

More recently, Irish mathematicians used computer modeling in 1994 to determine the best geometric shape bubbles can take for most efficient packing, while other scientists have used acoustic levitation—powerful sound waves—to suspend bubbles in mid-air. In 2006, Harvard University scientists figured out that adding tiny colloidal particles to the mix created a kind of coating or armor, producing much more stable bubbles that could be reshaped and molded at will. It's even possible to build rudimentary microfluidic bubble-based logic devices to transport therapeutic drugs or chemical reagents.

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CreativeFuture Launches Withering Attack on Google Over Copyright

The CreativeFuture coalition, which represents more than 520 companies and organizations in film, TV, music, and publishing, has launched a withering and unprecedented public attack on Google. After spotting a job posting in which Google advertised for a new Head of Copyright, CreativeFuture reworded it match how they perceive the role. It’s an extraordinary read.

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

Before getting hired by Google back in 2010, lawyer Fred von Lohmann was a senior attorney at the EFF dealing with intellectual property matters.

In March 2018, after serving as Google’s legal director for copyright issues, von Lohmann left the company, having fought many battles in favor of Google’s right to use third-party content on its services.

This led to Google advertising for a new Head of Copyright, highlighting all the great qualities a candidate must possess to qualify for such a lofty position. While it’s unclear if the role has been filled, the posting has since been removed – but not before pro-copyright group CreativeFuture got its hands on it.

The coalition, which claims to represent more than 520 companies and organizations and over 160,000 creative individuals, published a “corrected” version this week, in which it highlights the qualities it believes a person will need to get the job. It pulls no punches.

“Following a thorough analysis by our in-house team of creativity defenders, we at CreativeFuture have determined that certain key details of the posting may be in need of revision – so as to present a more accurate portrayal of what the position truly entails,” CreativeFuture begins.

“We have taken the liberty of making these edits for you, presented below as red-lined corrections to the original document. Though the job posting has since been closed online, we trust you will make whomever steps into the role aware of the suggested changes, so that they may conduct their work with Google’s usual high regard for creative professionals and the security of their works in the digital space.”

In case it’s not entirely obvious already, that’s a pretty sarcastic hors d’oeuvre. The main course, resplendent in its bright red edits, fills up the consumer with anti-Google rhetoric so rich, there’s no room left for dessert.

Head of Anti-Copyright, interested?

The full ‘revised’ posting, which can be found here, goes on to accuse Google of manipulating Members of Congress, conspiracy, nurturing a corrosive business, evading liability, failing to implement a repeat infringer policy, and displaying a “willingness to turn a blind eye to pirated content being uploaded to [its] servers on an overwhelming scale.”

Finally, CreativeFuture determines that the successful candidate for Head of Anti-Copyright should have “strong bullshitting skills”, “low self-respect,” and “questionable judgment.” Oh, and a passion for playing Whack-a-Mole.

It’s worth reiterating that CreativeFuture speaks for dozens of industry giants. All the big Hollywood and TV studios are involved, not to mention companies like Warner Music Group and even Microsoft. Of course, they’re entitled to argue as passionately as they see fit, but one has to go back a long way to find this level of bitterness in the copyright wars.

Indeed, this brand of half-joking-yet-serious insult approach hasn’t been seen since Anakata of the Pirate Bay demanded the strategic placement of a retractable baton inside a person of importance at Dreamworks. It’s a real surprise that we’re back on that level again many years later, not least since it’s now billion dollar companies hurling the insults.

While this is clearly a great time to be alive, something is missing from this battle of the barbs. Google, it seems, doesn’t want to get sucked in.

Every single day the company finds itself lambasted over its supposed anti-copyright practices but until now has managed to avoid rolling round in the mud with its accusers. That’s a real shame, not least since public shit-flinging contests on this scale tend to get a lot of views on YouTube, if both sides can be bothered to put in the effort. Ask Logan Paul and KSI.

If a public conflict does indeed come to pass, there’s always the option of monetization. YouTube might not pay the going rate but it’s better than the big fat nothing being offered by Twitter, where most of the war drums are being banged at the moment.

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

Gallery: Exploring Nintendo’s flagship New York City store

Take a quick visual tour of Nintendo World’s singular tourist destination.

Growing up, I loved exploring the heavily branded shopping experiences of the Disney Store and the Warner Bros. Studio Store. These days, I can get a more tech-oriented version of the same basic concept at one of Apple or Microsoft's many retail locations. But to get Nintendo's version of that kind of retail wonderland, I have to go to the company's one and only Nintendo World Store location, in New York City's Rockefeller Center.

For locals, Nintendo World is just another tourist trap. But for hundreds of tourists every day, the half-museum, half-arcade, half-expansive gift shop (yup, three halves) is a kind of mecca to pay homage to the company and its creations. The same appeal might not translate if Nintendo expanded the concept to every mall and shopping center in the country. That said, we think the depth and breadth of multi-generational Nintendo fandom could probably sustain more than a single location in one city.

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Cheese danish shipping, warrantless GPS trackers, and a border doctrine challenge

Judge to feds: No, you can’t warrantlessly put a GPS device on truck entering US.

A multilane highway meets a large border station.

Enlarge / The border crossing at Port Huron, Michigan, as seen in 2015. (credit: Ken Lund / Flickr)

At the end of August, a federal judge in Riverside, California made a potentially landmark decision for border privacy advocates—finding that it is unconstitutional for federal agents to warrantlessly install GPS tracking devices onto a truck entering the United States from Canada.

In the grand scheme, the decision stands in the face of a controversial but standing legal idea called "the border doctrine." The doctrine's concept is that warrants are not required to conduct a search at the border in the name of national sovereignty.

And in this particular incident—a case called United States v. Slavco Ignjatov et al. that allegedly involves Starbucks cheese danishes and a trafficking organization that sounds straight out of Breaking Badthe ruling could be a major victory for defendants as it would suppress any evidence obtained through the use of the warrantless GPS tracker.

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