Mit dem Aktionstag Prime Day will Amazon einen besonders hohen Umsatz erzielen. Kunden freuen sich über Schnäppchen, doch Mitarbeiter des Online-Händlers sind verärgert. Sie streiken wie schon seit Jahren für einen Tarifvertrag und höhere Löhne. (Amazo…
Mit dem Aktionstag Prime Day will Amazon einen besonders hohen Umsatz erzielen. Kunden freuen sich über Schnäppchen, doch Mitarbeiter des Online-Händlers sind verärgert. Sie streiken wie schon seit Jahren für einen Tarifvertrag und höhere Löhne. (Amazon, Verdi)
Golem kommt zu dir: Golem.de möchte noch mehr darüber wissen, was IT-Profis in ihrem Berufsalltag umtreibt. Dafür begleitet jeder unserer Redakteure eine Woche lang ein IT-Team eines Unternehmens. Welches? Dafür bitten wir um Vorschläge. (Golem.de, Int…
Golem kommt zu dir: Golem.de möchte noch mehr darüber wissen, was IT-Profis in ihrem Berufsalltag umtreibt. Dafür begleitet jeder unserer Redakteure eine Woche lang ein IT-Team eines Unternehmens. Welches? Dafür bitten wir um Vorschläge. (Golem.de, Internet)
Amazon’s Fire tablets are arguably some of the best cheap tablets worth buying, thanks to a combination of decent displays, specs, and performance and low starting prices (which are even lower on Prime Day or during other sales). The Amazon Fire …
Amazon’s Fire tablets are arguably some of the best cheap tablets worth buying, thanks to a combination of decent displays, specs, and performance and low starting prices (which are even lower on Prime Day or during other sales). The Amazon Fire 7 has a list price of $50, but you can pick one up for […]
Amazon Prime day officially begins on July 15th. But Amazon jumped the gun a bit and launched Prime Day deals on its first-party hardware on July 14th. That means if you have an Amazon Prime membership you can pick up a Fire tablet for as little as $30…
Amazon Prime day officially begins on July 15th. But Amazon jumped the gun a bit and launched Prime Day deals on its first-party hardware on July 14th. That means if you have an Amazon Prime membership you can pick up a Fire tablet for as little as $30, a Fire TV Stick for as little […]
On July 9, BitTorrent Inc. released a much-heralded and new version of uTorrent that promises to make downloads faster while earning seeders BitTorrent Tokens (BTT). The big question is whether it delivers what it promises in the client. Our own initial tests suggest it does not.
By now most people will be familiar with the news that BitTorrent Inc. recently released a new version of its dominant uTorrent client.
The claims are that this will revolutionize torrenting, with people able to earn BTT in exchange for seeding. The plan is that this will make swarms more healthy because there is more bandwidth available. This, in turn, should speed up downloads – for BTT-spending uTorrent users, at least.
The idea of a torrent client allocating bandwidth to peers via financial discrimination is contrary to the broad aims of the original BitTorrent protocol. As such it is a divisive and sensitive topic. Nevertheless, we wanted to find out more because if it does work, loyalty to tradition might be a thing of the past.
As reported during launch week, all downloaders of the new uTorrent were gifted 10 BTT to bootstrap the system. One way or another, we were determined to make this value change. However, despite extensive seeding of in-demand and low-seeded torrents alike, it stubbornly remained the same, despite the client insisting that there were plenty of BTT-enabled peers in the swarms.
Meanwhile, crypto-focused people appearing in BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun’s Twitter feed were apparently having huge success, raking in more than a dollar’s worth of BTT after seeding dozens of torrents during the first day.
— Dave [Tron-Society] (@redpillblue1) July 9, 2019
This success raised a few eyebrows because one of our sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told us July 10 that after running two instances of the software, one with 6.5TB seeded and another with 1.1TB downloaded, he hadn’t made or lost a penny, with his BTT stubbornly sitting at 10 BTT. Some people just can’t catch a break, it seems.
Of course, these uploads and downloads have to be made to and from BTT-enabled peers to count, so it’s possible (although a little improbable) that not a single uTorrent user with the feature enabled entered any of the swarms being serviced by the expert torrent user mentioned above.
However, the crypto-minded Twitter user in Sun’s feed was kind enough to hand out some advice, including getting torrents from BitTorrent’s own ‘Now‘ index. That felt like a good idea since users of that resource might be more likely to be running uTorrent with BTT enabled than random torrent users elsewhere. Particularly those who prefer open-source software rather than the proprietary offering from BitTorrent.
To allow us to do some tests over a number of minutes, we needed a reasonably-sized torrent from the Now resource. We picked a 416MB file called “Live From Brixton and Beyond” since most of the other files were too small to measure beyond a few seconds.
Our aim was to find plenty of BTT-powered uTorrent users ready to boost our download speeds, spend some of our own BTT, potentially earn some BTT back, and test out exactly how much faster these downloads can go with this new system promising to change the world.
To do this we downloaded the file detailed above six times in total – three times with BitTorrent Speed enabled and three times without. Each Speed-enabled download was followed by a non-Speed transfer directly after, to ensure that the swarm conditions stayed roughly the same throughout.
Each ‘Speed’ download initiated would enable us to see the number of BTT-enabled peers in the swarm prepared to connect to us (the client provides this number), see the promised speed boost (it also provides that), then compare the promised boosts with the results of an equal number of downloads with everything turned off.
The rough images below show the following: Our download reference number at the top, BTT balance, promised Speed boost in MB/s, number of peers (we allowed this to reach a minimum of 15 before taking a screenshot) followed by the percentage Speed boost.
Underneath that are two further screenshots showing stats from the uTorrent client. The first reveals the download time elapsed with Speed turned on, the second with Speed turned off. All screenshots of transfers were taken as close to one second remaining as possible to show that no transfers were extended beyond the downloading phase, which would distort download times.
Downloads 1 and 2
As the image above shows, 24 BTT-enabled peers wanted to do business with the promise of increasing download speeds massively. However, the “download speed increase” bar is next to useless as a measurement tool (particularly when a torrent is just starting) and as the final elapsed times show, the Speed boost – if there is any at all as a result of spending BTT – is pretty small.
So, on to Downloads 3 and 4, the first with Speed, the second without. Again, it’s exactly the same file and as close to the same swarm as possible by executing both transfers immediately after the first batch.
Downloads 3 and 4
The results show that the Speed-enabled transfer took 28 seconds less than the one without, but given the promises of massive speed boosts when the torrent first started, we can conclude that the figures in the client are misleading at best. So, onto downloads 5 and 6 as quickly as possible, to ensure a consistent swarm.
Downloads 5 and 6
As the transfer stats for Download 5 show, the elapsed time (6m 16s) is remarkably consistent when compared to Download 1 (6m 14s) and Download 4 (6m 12s), a testament to the stability of the swarm. It’s worth noting that Download 4 (the fastest of the three) was a test with Speed turned off.
Importantly, we can also see that during this final test the results were reversed over the previous one, with the non-Speed Download 6 trumping the BTT-powered Download 5 by 43 seconds.
Finally, we decided to put two torrent clients into exactly the same swarm. One of the clients was uTorrent with Speed turned on, the other was a basic Deluge client. We loaded the same torrent into both and gave uTorrent a small head start, basically the time it took to move the mouse over to Deluge and trigger the start. This is what uTorrent promised as a boost;
More than 320% speed increase offered…
As the video below shows, uTorrent managed to connect to many more seeders than Deluge and the performance of each client differed quite a bit in other areas too. Crucially, however, the downloads in both clients finished within a second of each other.
It’s important to note that there are many moving parts in any torrent swarm but the bottom line here is that when a BTT-enabled uTorrent client was placed in a swarm with many other clients with the same ability, it performed no better than one without, despite lofty claims to the contrary.
Of course, we should also remind people that with Deluge (in this case) people won’t earn any BTT for seeding but we’ve already established that the figure of 10 BTT that we began with has never changed since the client was installed.
Magic beans? People should taste them themselves before making their own minds up. Maybe they’ll taste better in future….we’ll see.
Prime Day is nearly upon us, and Amazon has already pushed out a bunch of deals on its own devices. Like Prime Days past, Amazon has discounted most of its devices and services in the hopes that more people will take the plunge and try Echo speakers or other Alexa-enabled devices, Kindle e-readers, Fire TV devices, and more. As with all Prime Day deals, the discounts are only available to members of Amazon’s Prime service.
Fire TVs
Speaking of Fire TVs, Amazon has heavily discounted many of those streaming devices, including the Fire TV Stick and the Fire TV Stick 4K. For Prime Day, the Fire TV Stick with an Alexa Remote for $14.99 (down from $39.99) or a Fire TV Stick 4K with an Alexa Remote for $24.99 (down from $49.99). Fire TV Sticks are the most affordable Alexa-enabled streaming devices from Amazon, but these Prime Day prices are both new lows for the respective devices.
The most obvious difference between the two is video resolution: the Fire TV Stick has a max resolution of 1080p, while the Fire TV Stick 4K supports 4K video as well as HDR10 and Dolby Vision technology. The Fire TV Stick 4K also has an updated quad-core processor so it will have noticeably faster and smoother performance when compared to older Fire TV devices. Otherwise, both streaming sticks have 8GB of RAM, 802.11ac dual-band MIMO Wi-Fi, and Alexa voice command support via the included remote.
A massive simulation done with a “chameleon” theory of gravity.
Enlarge/ Galaxy clusters generated by the Universe simulator IllustrisTNG. (credit: TNG Collaboration)
From our current perspective, the Universe seems to be dominated by two things we find frustratingly difficult to understand. One of these is dark matter, which describes the fact that everything from galaxies on up behaves as if it has more mass than we can detect. While that has spawned extensive searches for particles that could account for the visual discrepancy, it's also triggered the development of alternative theories of gravity, ones that can replace relativity while accounting for the discrepancies in apparent mass.
So far, these proposals have fallen well short of replacing general relativity. And they say nothing about the other big mystery, dark energy, which appears to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe. Instead, researchers have developed an entirely separate class of theories that could modify gravity in a way that eliminates the need for dark energy. Now, researchers have run simulations of galaxy and star formation using this alternative version of physics, and they found we might be on the cusp of testing some of them.
Gravitational alternatives
General relativity explains a broad range of phenomena, and it works well to describe the Universe as a whole, provided dark matter and dark energy exist as separate entities. Any alternatives to gravity have to account for everything that's explained by general relativity while also accounting for the additional effects of at least one of these two dark forces. A class of theories, collectively termed MOND (for Modified Newtonian Dynamics), is intended to do away with dark matter, but it struggles to account for things relativity handles with easy.
A massive simulation done with a “chameleon” theory of gravity.
Enlarge/ Galaxy clusters generated by the Universe simulator IllustrisTNG. (credit: TNG Collaboration)
From our current perspective, the Universe seems to be dominated by two things we find frustratingly difficult to understand. One of these is dark matter, which describes the fact that everything from galaxies on up behaves as if it has more mass than we can detect. While that has spawned extensive searches for particles that could account for the visual discrepancy, it's also triggered the development of alternative theories of gravity, ones that can replace relativity while accounting for the discrepancies in apparent mass.
So far, these proposals have fallen well short of replacing general relativity. And they say nothing about the other big mystery, dark energy, which appears to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe. Instead, researchers have developed an entirely separate class of theories that could modify gravity in a way that eliminates the need for dark energy. Now, researchers have run simulations of galaxy and star formation using this alternative version of physics, and they found we might be on the cusp of testing some of them.
Gravitational alternatives
General relativity explains a broad range of phenomena, and it works well to describe the Universe as a whole, provided dark matter and dark energy exist as separate entities. Any alternatives to gravity have to account for everything that's explained by general relativity while also accounting for the additional effects of at least one of these two dark forces. A class of theories, collectively termed MOND (for Modified Newtonian Dynamics), is intended to do away with dark matter, but it struggles to account for things relativity handles with easy.
Bei den Diskussionen um G2A melden die Entwickler des Indiespiels Factorio konkrete Schäden durch Verkäufe mit gestohlenen Kreditkartendaten. Dabei wird auch klar, mit welchen Tricks inzwischen über die Key-Reseller versucht wird, Geld zu verdienen. (G…
Bei den Diskussionen um G2A melden die Entwickler des Indiespiels Factorio konkrete Schäden durch Verkäufe mit gestohlenen Kreditkartendaten. Dabei wird auch klar, mit welchen Tricks inzwischen über die Key-Reseller versucht wird, Geld zu verdienen. (G2A, Steam)
Seit Donnerstag senden die Satelliten des Galileo-Systems keine Daten mehr an die Navigationssysteme. Die Betreibergesellschaft schweigt über die Ursache. (Galileo, GPS)
Seit Donnerstag senden die Satelliten des Galileo-Systems keine Daten mehr an die Navigationssysteme. Die Betreibergesellschaft schweigt über die Ursache. (Galileo, GPS)
Mit dem Aktionstag Prime Day will Amazon einen besonders hohen Umsatz erzielen. Kunden freuen sich über Schnäppchen, doch Mitarbeiter des Online-Händlers sind verärgert. Sie streiken wie schon seit Jahren für einen Tarifvertrag und höhere Löhne. (Amazon, Verdi) 
Golem kommt zu dir: Golem.de möchte noch mehr darüber wissen, was IT-Profis in ihrem Berufsalltag umtreibt. Dafür begleitet jeder unserer Redakteure eine Woche lang ein IT-Team eines Unternehmens. Welches? Dafür bitten wir um Vorschläge. (
Bei den Diskussionen um G2A melden die Entwickler des Indiespiels Factorio konkrete Schäden durch Verkäufe mit gestohlenen Kreditkartendaten. Dabei wird auch klar, mit welchen Tricks inzwischen über die Key-Reseller versucht wird, Geld zu verdienen. (
Seit Donnerstag senden die Satelliten des Galileo-Systems keine Daten mehr an die Navigationssysteme. Die Betreibergesellschaft schweigt über die Ursache. (
You must be logged in to post a comment.