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Good news for folks looking to play games on their Amazon Fire TV devices: the Amazon Fire TV Game Controller in on sale for $20, marked down from $50. That’s the lowest price ever on this wireless game controller. Bad news for folks that have re…
Good news for folks looking to play games on their Amazon Fire TV devices: the Amazon Fire TV Game Controller in on sale for $20, marked down from $50. That’s the lowest price ever on this wireless game controller. Bad news for folks that have recent Fire TV devices: Amazon’s official game controller only works […]
The post Amazon Fire TV Game Controller doesn’t support newest Fire TVs anymore appeared first on Liliputing.
A look at why reporting on some areas of science is just asking for pain.
Enlarge (credit: Aurich / Getty)
You might think being a science writer is a dream job, one that means spending all day learning new things about a seemingly endless sweep of interesting fields. And, to an extent, you'd be right. But in other ways, it's also a place where dreams go to die. Things you think should be fascinating—things that, in some cases, you've dreamed about knowing more about for much of your life—turn out to be staggeringly dull.
So, forgive your science-writing staff if they finish a week wanting to stab the first scientists they see—even (or perhaps especially) if that's themselves. To keep the violence to a minimum, we're taking the opportunity to vent a bit about the fields we thought we loved, but have turned out to disappoint us.
Writers' names have been removed from their contributions to protect the not-entirely-innocent. We're sure you'll figure it out anyway.
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After announcing plans last yeast to develop a new smartphone operating system using free and open source software, developer Gaël Duval has announced that the first beta is now ready for testing. It’s called /e/, and it’s basically a custo…
After announcing plans last yeast to develop a new smartphone operating system using free and open source software, developer Gaël Duval has announced that the first beta is now ready for testing. It’s called /e/, and it’s basically a custom ROM based on Google’s Android operating system. But it’s been stripped of most of the proprietary, […]
The post /e/ is an Android-based smartphone OS stripped of Google’s proprietary components appeared first on Liliputing.
The new standard for complex digital boardgames… but it costs $20.
Enlarge (credit: Asmodee Digital)
Scythe is a heavy German-style board game that combines worker placement, area control, resource management, a little combat, and a point salad scoring with a setup so ornate that Alice Waters wanted to put it on her menu (read our original review of the game to see for yourself.) Scythe has been among the top-rated games on BoardGameGeek since its 2016 release thanks to an extremely well-balanced design, very little randomness, and the use of many different mechanics in a single game. But it comes with a steep learning curve—both for rules and strategy—which makes the game ideal for a digital adaptation.
Asmodee Digital, which has established itself as the premier developer for high-end ports of board games, has just released its version of Scythe: Digital Edition to Steam (for both Mac and Windows), and it is unsurprisingly superb. Scythe can easily take two-plus hours on tableto, but it's now accessible to more players through an excellent tutorial and a clever UI that keeps the screen clear while ensuring that key information is available to players.
That's important because Scythe requires you to track a tremendous number of things: you’re producing and spending four different resources, collecting three forms of currency (gold, power, and popularity), and trying to achieve six out of about a dozen possible objectives (such as getting to eight workers, building all four buildings, or reaching 16 power within a turn). The digital Scythe handles all of this accounting for you, keeping track of what you can do, what you still have left to do, and oh by the way did you forget you were entitled to this? There’s nothing intuitive at all about the rules of Scythe, and it’s the kind of game that will likely keep even experienced players peeking at the rule book. The app handles all of that quite smoothly, offering mouse-over prompts so you know what each option does and a series of questions and confirmation dialogs for each set of actions you can take.
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The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that ISPs are entitled to compensation for looking up the details of alleged copyright infringers. This is the result of a dispute between Rogers and movie company Voltage Pictures, which demanded details of tens of thousands of alleged pirates. The scale of compensation is yet to be determined.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
Movie studio Voltage Pictures is no stranger to suing BitTorrent users.
The company has filed numerous lawsuits against alleged pirates in the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia, and is believed to have made a lot of money doing so.
In 2016, Voltage launched a “reverse class action” in Canada to demand damages from tens of thousands of Internet users whom they accuse of sharing films, including The Cobbler, Pay the Ghost, Good Kill, Fathers and Daughters, and American Heist.
This meant that, in a single swoop, many Internet subscribers were at risk of having their personal details exposed. However, Internet provider Rogers was not willing to hand over this information freely.
Instead, the ISP demanded compensation for every IP-address lookup, as is permitted by copyright law. The provider asked for $100 per hour of work, plus taxes, to link the addresses to subscriber accounts.
The Federal Court initially agreed that the charges were permitted under the Copyright Act. However, when Voltage Pictures appealed the decision, this was reversed. Unhappy with this outcome, Rogers took the matter to the Supreme Court
In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Rogers’ favor this week. The Internet provider is entitled to recover costs to link IP-addressed to customer details. Exactly how much will be determined in a future Federal Court hearing.
Justice Russell Brown argues that while the costs may be relatively small, they are not negligible, as the Court of Appeal argued.
“While these costs, even when combined, may well be small, I would not assume that they will always be ‘negligible’, as the Federal Court of Appeal anticipates,” the Judge writes.
According to Justice Brown, “an ISP is entitled to the reasonable costs of steps that are necessary to discern a person’s identity.”
The scale of the costs Rogers can recover will play a major role in the profitability of these file-sharing cases. In the event the costs are set relatively high, Voltage and other copyright holders may have to try their luck elsewhere.
David Watt, Rogers senior vice-president of regulatory affairs, is happy with the ruling and told the local press that it’s “an important win for our customers and millions of internet subscribers facing open season on their personal information.”
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
In drei Jahren soll es in Deutschland flächendeckend Mobilfunkempfang geben. Im Bundesland Sachsen-Anhalt ist das derzeit noch nicht gegeben: Die CDU-Landtagsfraktion hat eine App veröffentlicht, die Funklöcher erfasst. Es sind viele. (Mobilfunk, Techn…
In drei Jahren soll es in Deutschland flächendeckend Mobilfunkempfang geben. Im Bundesland Sachsen-Anhalt ist das derzeit noch nicht gegeben: Die CDU-Landtagsfraktion hat eine App veröffentlicht, die Funklöcher erfasst. Es sind viele. (Mobilfunk, Technologie) SpaceX hat seinen ersten zahlenden Weltraumtouristen: Elon Musks Raumfahrtunternehmen hat den ersten von zwei Plätzen für einen Flug um den Mond verkauft. Der Flug wird voraussichtlich im kommenden Jahr stattfinden. (SpaceX, Raumfahrt)
Spotify-Premium-Kunden erhalten mehr Freiheiten bei der Nutzung von Offline-Inhalten. Künftig können mehr Songs pro Gerät offline genutzt werden, und diese Offline-Nutzung ist auf mehr Geräten als bisher möglich. (Spotify, Android)
Vor acht Jahren hat sich Google aus China zurückgezogen, weil das Unternehmen nicht mehr nach den Vorgaben der Regierung in Peking filtern wollte. Googles neue für China entwickelte Such-App zensiert nicht nur, sondern erfasst sogar die Telefonnummern …
Last month, following a lawsuit filed by several major broadcasters, Russian tech giant Yandex was forced to remove pirated TV content from its search engine. While Yandex felt the law had been misapplied, its subsequent appeal was rejected. In response to the confusion, the government will now seek to amend the country’s copyright laws.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
After complaining that Russian Internet giant Yandex had failed to keep pirated versions of their content out of its search results, several major broadcasters filed a lawsuit with the Moscow City Court.
Gazprom-Media outlets including TNT, TV-3, 2×2, and Super went straight for the jugular, petitioning the Court to have ISPs block Yandex’s video indexing platform. The Court granted the request and gave Yandex until August 30 to remove all of the offending content.
Initially, Yandex flat-out refused. The company said the law was being misinterpreted, claiming that current legislation states that pirate content must be removed from sites hosting it and that search engine links are not covered.
However, after announcing that it would appeal the decision of the Moscow City Court, Yandex suddenly changed its mind on removing the content. Fearing its entire platform would be blocked by ISPs, Yandex erred on the side of caution, deleting all content that may (or indeed may not) have infringed the media companies’ rights.
Early September the TV channels again filed lawsuits with the Moscow City Court, again over the appearance of links to their content appearing in search results.
“Four lawsuits were filed by Yandex. In all the lawsuits, the TV channels ask the Court to oblige the defendant to stop creating technical conditions that ensure the placement of works on the Yandex.ru website,” press secretary of the court Ulyana Solopova told Interfax.
With a decision on the matter pending (and the underlying aim of Gazprom Media to reach a settlement agreement with Yandex), soon after the Moscow City Court responded to Yandex’s original appeal against a preliminary blocking injunction.
In a blow to Yandex, the Court upheld its original ruling, meaning that the decision to remove the content before an ISP ban was put in place was well-timed by the search company.
However, it now appears that the confusion over the requirements of the law will see the government step in to offer a solution. According to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov, the country’s anti-piracy legislation needs to be “improved” following the Yandex/Gazprom Media dispute.
“Regarding the regulation of data in terms of copyright and intellectual property rights, of course, the improvement of legislation, including anti-piracy, is exactly necessary,” Akimov told Interfax.
“By the end of the year we will try to present the necessary amendments to the Duma, which will allow us to more clearly define the rights of the parties,” he said.
Akimov said that the amendments will be the product of negotiations between the Federal Antimonopoly Service, intellectual property bodies, and the Ministry of Economic Development and Business.
It is currently unclear which direction the talks will go and whether any changes will favor Yandex’s perception of the law or the Moscow City Court’s interpretation.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
SpaceX hat seinen ersten zahlenden Weltraumtouristen: Elon Musks Raumfahrtunternehmen hat den ersten von zwei Plätzen für einen Flug um den Mond verkauft. Der Flug wird voraussichtlich im kommenden Jahr stattfinden. (
Spotify-Premium-Kunden erhalten mehr Freiheiten bei der Nutzung von Offline-Inhalten. Künftig können mehr Songs pro Gerät offline genutzt werden, und diese Offline-Nutzung ist auf mehr Geräten als bisher möglich. (
Vor acht Jahren hat sich Google aus China zurückgezogen, weil das Unternehmen nicht mehr nach den Vorgaben der Regierung in Peking filtern wollte. Googles neue für China entwickelte Such-App zensiert nicht nur, sondern erfasst sogar die Telefonnummern ihrer Nutzer. (
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