Das britische Startup Scape Technologies will die Position im Raum mithilfe von Kameras wesentlich präziser bestimmen, als das mit GPS möglich wäre. Nun wird es von Facebook übernommen, das damit seine Aktivitäten rund um Augmented Reality verstärkt. (…
Das britische Startup Scape Technologies will die Position im Raum mithilfe von Kameras wesentlich präziser bestimmen, als das mit GPS möglich wäre. Nun wird es von Facebook übernommen, das damit seine Aktivitäten rund um Augmented Reality verstärkt. (Facebook, GPS)
Sun’s mysteries and origin of violent storms that spew plasma across space to be studied.
Enlarge/ ESA's Solar Orbiter mission will face the Sun from within the orbit of Mercury at its closest approach. (credit: ESA/ATG medialab)
Just before midnight on Sunday, a spacecraft will depart from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to the sun. Known as Solar Orbiter, this spacecraft will spend the next seven years dipping in and out of the extremely inhospitable environment around the sun. In the process, it will provide us with our first glimpse of the sun’s poles, which will be critical to understanding its topsy-turvy magnetic field. It will also help uncover the origin of violent solar storms that send plasma hurtling toward Earth, where it can knock out satellites and disrupt our power grids.
The Solar Orbiter mission is spearheaded by the European Space Agency and has been almost two decades in the making. It complements NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, which will pass closer to the sun than any spacecraft in history. Only a year into its mission, Parker is providing scientists with four times more data about the solar environment than expected, says Nour Raouafi, a heliophysicist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and Parker project scientist. “We are venturing into regions of space that we never explored before,” says Raouafi. “Every observation is a potential discovery.”
Der Elektro-Truck Nikola Tre wird von Iveco in Ulm gebaut, teilten die Unternehmen mit. Der Hauptinvestor CNH will zudem weitere 250 Millionen US-Dollar in Nikola stecken. (Nachhaltigkeit, Technologie)
Der Elektro-Truck Nikola Tre wird von Iveco in Ulm gebaut, teilten die Unternehmen mit. Der Hauptinvestor CNH will zudem weitere 250 Millionen US-Dollar in Nikola stecken. (Nachhaltigkeit, Technologie)
Die in den 90er Jahren veröffentlichten System Shock gelten als Spielklassiker, nun steht System Shock 3 offenbar vor dem “Game Over”. Bereits bei den letzten Projekten der Entwickler ist so gut wie alles schiefgelaufen. (System Shock, Rollenspiel)
Die in den 90er Jahren veröffentlichten System Shock gelten als Spielklassiker, nun steht System Shock 3 offenbar vor dem "Game Over". Bereits bei den letzten Projekten der Entwickler ist so gut wie alles schiefgelaufen. (System Shock, Rollenspiel)
A judge at a Texas court has ordered two individuals behind the pirate IPTV service Easybox IPTV to pay $9.9m in copyright infringement damages. In a judgment handed down this week, the judge awarded the maximum $150,000 in statutory damages for each of 66 copyrighted works willfully infringed by the defendants via their unlicensed streaming platform.
As part of its ongoing campaign targeting unlicensed IPTV providers servicing the US market, broadcaster DISH Network filed a lawsuit in a Texas court last August.
It targeted Easybox, an IPTV service that reportedly offered subscribers more than 1,000 channels, including more than two dozen channels exclusively licensed by DISH.
The broadcaster’s lawsuits often target IPTV providers for alleged breaches of the Federal Communications Act but in this instance, the lawsuit was based in copyright law. In common with other similar actions currently winding their way through US courts, this one met little opposition along the way.
DISH says it tried to get Easybox to stop its illegal activities on many occasions before filing the lawsuit, including by sending around 300 copyright infringement notices to the provider and its CDN providers between 2016 and 2019. All were ignored so the broadcaster was left with little option but to bring the matter before a judge.
As reported in detail last week, DISH recently put forward a proposed final judgment and permanent injunction for the court’s consideration. That has now been largely accepted and signed off by the court, with some exceptions, but largely along the lines of DISH’s recommendations.
In an order signed February 5 by District Court Judge Lynn N. Hughes, the Judge notes that defendants Hung Tran and Thi Nga Nguyen were served on November 21, 2019, but neither filed an answer or otherwise appeared to defend the action. As a result, the order grants DISH $150,000 in statutory damages for 66 of DISH’s copyrighted works infringed via the IPTV service.
“Dish Network LLC will take $9,900,000 from Hung Tran, Thi Nga Nguyen, and Easybox IPTV, jointly and severally, plus interest,” the default judgment reads.
“This amount reflects statutory damages of $150,000 for their willful infringement of sixty-six of Dish’s copyrighted works.”
The terms of the permanent junction are less tightly-worded than those proposed by DISH but still restrain the defendants, Easybox IPTV, or any entity they create, from distributing DISH’s channels in the United States or selling Easybox set-top boxes or IPTV subscriptions that stream DISH’s channels.
The injunction also orders various service providers to stop doing business with Easybox and the named defendants, if that business entails transmitting copyrighted TV shows. Those third-party Internet companies are named as Global Layer B.V. and WorldStream B.V. (Netherlands), OVH Hosting Inc. (Canada), and Netrouting Inc. (United States).
In its proposed permanent injunction, DISH previously requested that the registries in control of domain names connected to Easybox should render them inaccessible before transferring them to DISH for the company’s use. The actual injunction handed down by Judge Hughes doesn’t go quite that far.
“Registries must disable the domain names used to transmit Dish’s protected channels within forty-eight hours of receiving this order. The domain names to be disabled include easybox.tv, e900x.com, and k2442.com, and any future domain name used by Easybox IPTV, Hung Tran, or Thi Nga Nguyen to transmit Dish’s channels.”
Whether the defendants will pay all or indeed any of the damages handed down by the Court remains an open question. The Easybox service and associated sites appear to have been down for some time.
The default judgment and injunction can be viewed here (pdf)
Rund 2,77 Milliarden Gigabyte an Daten haben die Deutschen im Jahr 2019 über ihr Smartphone oder andere mobile Endgeräte verbraucht – deutlich mehr als 2018, wie Zahlen der Bundesnetzagentur zeigen. (Mobilfunk, Smartphone)
Rund 2,77 Milliarden Gigabyte an Daten haben die Deutschen im Jahr 2019 über ihr Smartphone oder andere mobile Endgeräte verbraucht - deutlich mehr als 2018, wie Zahlen der Bundesnetzagentur zeigen. (Mobilfunk, Smartphone)
With the world still grappling with the new coronavirus outbreak, an unofficial paywall-free archive of scientific papers is spreading hope, not disease, to the scientific community. Speaking with TF, the operators of the project reveal that since its launch under a week ago, visitors from all over the world to the 5,300+ study resource have consumed almost half a terabyte of bandwidth.
The idea that scientific papers and studies should be locked up behind a paywall is a tightly held belief among the world’s largest, richest publishers. To the founder of the infamous Sci-Hub – often known as The Pirate Bay of Science – that is objectionable to the point of being offensive to humanity.
Granting free access to scientific knowledge for the benefit of all mankind is a growing movement. As reported here last December, people such as an archivist known as ‘shrine’ are now adding significant momentum to the cause, one that a few weeks ago received a specific calling.
Having made almost continuous headlines all around the planet this year, the Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak needs little introduction. At the time of writing, it has infected at least 31,500 people in 28 countries, killing more than 630. Preventing its spread is now a global matter and while doctors and scientists do their work, people like ‘shrine’ are doing their part to assist.
Organized by ‘shrine’ with support from friends and hosting provided by ‘Archivist’ at archiving site The-Eye.eu, the database was compiled after scanning Sci-Hub’s 80 million documents for anything related to coronaviruses and placing them in one place for easy access. The archive currently holds 5,532 studies and papers dating from 2020 right back to 1968.
A tiny sample of the coronavirus archive
“Our project is illegal, but it’s the right thing to do in this crisis. We refuse to put copyright before human lives. Sharing everything we know about the virus is essential, which is why international scientists are openly sharing their coronavirus findings in an unprecedented way,” ‘shrine’ writes.
“Developing-world scientists often work without article access due to complex and expensive contract agreements between publishers, universities, and hospitals, relying on overseas colleagues to help them hunt down PDF files. The virus is not going to wait for this, so we need to act with conviction, now.”
This week, Vice reported that scientific publishers, including Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer Nature, had removed their paywalls to allow free access to some research studies on multiple strains of the coronavirus. But for ‘shrine’, it was too little, too late.
“Publishers kept their Coronavirus paywalls active for nearly three weeks before waking up and providing a severely limited open access release,” he informs TorrentFreak.
“In our view this obstruction and delay to open research access during the crisis constitutes a crime against humanity, and should be seen as a direct attack against our life and health as a species.”
Even though the project is just a few days old, visitors to the archive have been arriving from all over the world.
Traffic data shared with TF shows that users from North America are responsible for just over 42% of the database’s hits, with Europe a close second accounting for almost 39%. Oceania and Asia follow in third and fourth place with 4.57% and 2.13% respectively, with South America and Africa sitting at the bottom.
At the time of writing, the unofficial archive has received more than half a billion requests which in turn have consumed around half a terabyte of bandwidth (see visual logfile sample render below). According to ‘shrine’ the project has been well received but if just a small amount of information from the archive proves useful to anyone in this health crisis, it will be mission accomplished.
“The Coronavirus Papers release has been met with appreciation and support from anonymous virologists, and we consider the project a success if we have assisted even one scientist with access to one of these critical studies.
“We hope that the archive continues to hold value as research continues, long after the publishers forget about the threat of pandemics and put their paywalls back up,” he adds.
While the archive at The-Eye is conveniently and instantly available, the entire collection of coronavirus papers – along with the earlier Libgen-archiving material – is also available via torrents. This method of sharing scientific studies is seen as crucial to maintaining access long term since it augments centralized storage with robust decentralization.
“The human right to education is enshrined in the torrents. The immutable 100-terabyte torrent collection stands as a promise of knowledge for future generations, for as long as we keep seeding humanity’s library keeps standing,” ‘shrine’ says.
“We are coming to realize that de-centralized web protocols like BitTorrent, IPFS, DAT, and others are central to the democratization of knowledge. The de-centralized protocols make it so that we’re not fighting alone, people all over the world can stand up with us for humanity’s knowledge.”
Series is best when it drops clumsy climate theme, lets characters take center stage.
Definitely not Marvel's Thor: Norwegian actor David Stakston plays Magne, a high school student who finds himself imbued with the powers of the god of thunder in Ragnorak.
A lonely, awkward high school student finds himself channeling the mythic powers of Thor in Ragnorak, a surprisingly engaging Norwegian-language reworking of Norse mythology brought into the 21st century. Granted, Ragnorak isn't going to give the MCU incarnation of Thor a run for his money any time soon. But despite occasional lapses into clumsy moralizing and clichéd teen-angst drama, the underlying story ultimately works.
(Mild spoilers below.)
The series is set in the fictional town of Edda, Norway—named after two Nordic literary masterpieces, the 13th-century Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda—and we are told that this is the place where the gods and giants once battled to the death in the original Ragnorak. A handful survived, and a family of immortal giants currently heads up Jutul Industries (Jutul is a variant of jötnar, a mythological class of giants), on which the town depends for its economic survival. Unfortunately, the corporation has also been disregarding the environment for decades, dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply, while global warming is causing the glaciers to recede at an alarming rate.
We go to to spoiler-filled lengths to explore the revelation—and guess what’s to come.
Enlarge/ An alternate cover for Marvel Comics' new Darth Vader #1 implies that this series will dig deeply into the history of Star Wars' most iconic villain.
The "Skywalker Saga" of nine films may have finally concluded, but that doesn't mean the Lucasfilm and Disney powers-that-be are done mining the original Star Wars films' stories and characters. Barely one month after the finale of The Mandalorian's first season, the Star Wars universe has already thrown another curveball at fans—but not in another TV or film launch.
Instead, this week's news comes from a brand-new Marvel series of comic books starring Darth Vader. We're here to spill the beans—and offer context and guesses as to what might come next.
Noooooooooooo...?
From here on out, we're in full-spoiler territory about multiple Star Wars properties. You've been warned.
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, which includes Hollywood studios as well as the streaming giants Netflix and Amazon, is trying to find out who the operators of Clipwatching and Fembed are. The group sees the sites as video piracy hosting hubs and has obtained a subpoena compelling Cloudflare to hand over personal information of the associated account holders.
The online piracy ecosystem is constantly evolving.
Ten years ago the entertainment industries were mostly concerned with torrent sites. Today, online streaming sites and services are the main challenges.
To tackle this threat, some of the largest companies in the world bundled their powers. In 2017 they formed the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which lists prominent members including major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and other entertainment giants.
The coalition has been very active both in- and outside of court. It has shut down various streaming tools, including unofficial Kodi add-ons and builds, and secured million-dollar judgments against pirate streaming box vendors.
This week we spotted a new tactic. On behalf of ACE, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) obtained a DMCA subpoena at a California District Court. The subpoena is directed at CDN provider Cloudflare and targets the video hosting services Fembed.com and Clipwatching.com.
Both sites allow users to upload videos that can be streamed from external sites. This makes them attractive to many pirate sites, which use these platforms to host their videos.
The MPA sees these hosting sites as pirate operations. In its submission to the US Trade Representative, the industry group highlighted Clipwatching.com as one of the most notorious copyright infringers online.
“As a video host, Clipwatching.com has a generous affiliation program, offering payments of $60 for every 10,000 views in tier 1 countries. Users can pay $30 per year to access the uploaded content without advertisements,” MPA wrote.
With the recently obtained subpoena, the MPA hopes to find out more about the people running these sites. Late last week it sent a copy of the legal paperwork to Cloudflare, asking it to hand over any personal information it has on the associated account holders.
“[Y]ou are required to disclose to the Motion Picture Association, Inc. (on behalf of the ACE Members) information sufficient to identify the infringers. This would include the individuals’ names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account history,” the MPA informed Cloudflare.
According to the MPA, both sites have exploited the exclusive rights of ACE members. This includes hosting pirated copies of the movies “The Lion King” and “Daddy’s Home,” which remain online today.
The obtained personal information will be used to “protect” the movie companies’ copyrights, the MPA notes. Exactly how that will take place is unknown, but if the information is usable, the operators can expect some legal pressure.
These DMCA subpoenas are not new. The RIAA has been using the same tactic for a few months already, with mixed success. However, as far as we know, this is the first DMCA subpoena ACE has obtained against Cloudflare.
—
A copy of the subpoena the MPA obtained on behalf of ACE is available here (pdf). A copy of the letter to Cloudflare can be found here (pdf).
Das britische Startup Scape Technologies will die Position im Raum mithilfe von Kameras wesentlich präziser bestimmen, als das mit GPS möglich wäre. Nun wird es von Facebook übernommen, das damit seine Aktivitäten rund um Augmented Reality verstärkt. (Facebook, GPS) 
Der Elektro-Truck Nikola Tre wird von Iveco in Ulm gebaut, teilten die Unternehmen mit. Der Hauptinvestor CNH will zudem weitere 250 Millionen US-Dollar in Nikola stecken. (
Die in den 90er Jahren veröffentlichten System Shock gelten als Spielklassiker, nun steht System Shock 3 offenbar vor dem "Game Over". Bereits bei den letzten Projekten der Entwickler ist so gut wie alles schiefgelaufen. (
As part of its ongoing campaign targeting unlicensed IPTV providers servicing the US market, broadcaster DISH Network filed a lawsuit in a Texas court last August.
Rund 2,77 Milliarden Gigabyte an Daten haben die Deutschen im Jahr 2019 über ihr Smartphone oder andere mobile Endgeräte verbraucht - deutlich mehr als 2018, wie Zahlen der Bundesnetzagentur zeigen. (
The online piracy ecosystem is constantly evolving.
You must be logged in to post a comment.