Onyx Boox Nova 2 eReader has 7.8 inch screen, 8-core CPU, pen and touch support

The Onyx BOOX Nova 2 is a premium eBook reader that’s also kind of an Android tablet. It has a 2 GHz octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, support for pen and touch input, and a 3,150 mAh battery. And the device runs an operating syst…

The Onyx BOOX Nova 2 is a premium eBook reader that’s also kind of an Android tablet. It has a 2 GHz octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, support for pen and touch input, and a 3,150 mAh battery. And the device runs an operating system based on Google Android 9.0. But the […]

Chuwi AeroBook Pro is a 4K laptop selling for $550 (during crowdfunding)

Chuwi’s latest budget laptop is a mid-range mobile computer with one surprisingly high-end feature: a 4K display. The Chuwi AeroBook Pro is set to ship in June, but the 15.6 inch laptop is up for pre-order through an Indiegogo campaign for about …

Chuwi’s latest budget laptop is a mid-range mobile computer with one surprisingly high-end feature: a 4K display. The Chuwi AeroBook Pro is set to ship in June, but the 15.6 inch laptop is up for pre-order through an Indiegogo campaign for about $550 (or less for early birds). The laptop measures about 14.2″ x 9.5″ x […]

Check out the first trailer for Hulu’s new animated series Solar Opposites

Earth impressions: “My scans didn’t indicate it was a human-infested crap hole.”

Justin Roiland and Thomas Middleditch provide the voices for Korvo and Terry, whose alien family must learn to fit into middle America.

If you devoured the latest season of Rick and Morty when it debuted last November, chances are you're already itching for season five. Sadly, if the series' history tells us anything, we're likely in for a long wait. But in the meantime, Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland and former head writer Mike McMahan are bringing a new animated series to Hulu, called Solar Opposites, about a family of aliens forced to take refuge in middle America.

The trailer just dropped, and it looks like the show will channel a lot of the same outrageously in-your-face, madcap energy that's made Rick and Morty such a nerdalicious delight. Per the official synopsis:

Solar Opposites centers around a team of four aliens who escape their exploding home world only to crash land into a move-in ready home in suburban America. They are evenly split on whether Earth is awful or awesome. Korvo (Justin Roiland) and Yumyulack (Sean Giambroni) only see the pollution, crass consumerism, and human frailty while Terry (Thomas Middleditch) and Jesse (Mary Mack) love humans and all their TV, junk food, and fun stuff. Their mission: protect the Pupa, a living super computer that will one day evolve into its true form, consume them and terraform the Earth.

Naturally, Roiland himself—the man responsible for Rick Sanchez's unique burp-talking speech patterns—will be voicing Korvo. And it looks like we'll also be hearing from all kinds of A-list talent in guest cameos, including Alan Tudyk, Alfred Molina, Amanda Leighton, Andrew Matarazzo, Andy Daly, Calum Worthy, Chris Cox, Christina Hendricks, Echo Kellum, Eric Bauza, Gary Anthony Williams, Gideon Adlon, Jacob Vargus, Jason Mantzoukas, Jeannie Elias, Jesse Mendel, Jon Barinholtz, Karan Brar, Kari Wahlgren, Ken Marino, Liam Cunningham, Maurice LaMarche, Miguel Sandoval, Nat Faxon, Natalie Morales, Neil Flynn, Phil LaMarr, Rainn Wilson, Rob Schrab, Ryan Ridley, Sagan McMahan, Thomas Barbusca, Tiffany Haddish, Tom Kenny, Vargus Mason, and Wendi McLendon-Covey.

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The Pirate Bay’s Oldest Active Torrent Turns 16 Years Old Today

While the majority of The Pirate Bay users download recent content, there are quite a few older torrents that continue to survive. Today, the oldest of all – an episode from the Swedish comedy series “High Chaparral” – celebrates its sixteenth anniversary. Other older torrents, including a copy of the documentary “Revolution OS” and an album from the Swedish pop group Gyllene Tider, remain active as well.

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

The Pirate Bay has weathered quite a few storms since its inception.

The notorious torrent site, which is a piracy icon today, was originally founded by Swedish anti-copyright think tank Piratbyrån during the summer of 2003.

In the years that followed, a lot has happened. The site was raided twice, had various changes in ownership, and the original co-founders were sentenced to prison. And in recent years, prolonged downtime issues, as the site currently faces, are the rule rather than the exception.

Despite all these setbacks and challenges, TPB is still here. It remains accessible on the Tor network, where the latest blockbusters, as well as some rare old torrents, remain readily available.

While torrents rely on at least one active seed to keep them alive, some files have proven to be quite resilient. In fact, quite a few torrents are older than some of the site’s younger users.

Today, The Pirate Bay’s oldest active torrent celebrates its sixteenth anniversary. The honor goes to an episode of the Swedish comedy show “High Chaparral,” which was uploaded by ‘kbdcb’ on March 25, 2004. At the time of writing, the file has one seeder according to TPB’s statistics, but various public trackers list more.

The oldest active torrent on TPB

The High Chaparral episode has been marked as the oldest active Pirate Bay torrent for a while. In the video category, it is currently followed by a copy of the 2001 documentary Revolution OS, which still has over a dozen seeders.

Looking at other categories, we see that the oldest active music torrent is an album from the Swedish pop group Gyllene Tider, titled “Samtliga hits!” The oldest game torrent is a copy of the Lord of the Rings strategy game War of the Ring, while a torrent for a really old version of ArcSoft’s photo editing software Funhouse leads the applications category.

If anything, this shows that no matter how much downtime a site like The Pirate Bay suffers, these torrents still survive.

That the High Chaparral episode is the longest surviving torrent on the site is remarkable for another reason as well. A few weeks after the torrent was uploaded, several people complained that they were stuck at 99%, which means that there was no seeder around at the time.

Years later, people started to notice that it had become the oldest torrent on The Pirate Bay, including MasterWAV, who dedicated an entry in his or her diary to this discovery.

“Dear diary, my heart burst of excitement to discover the oldest torrent in The Pirate Bay. I am happy to comment on this book and be part of the history of TPB. It’s like climbing Everest. Sincerely, thanks.”

Other commenters promised to keep seeding the file “forever,” which may be the prime reason why it’s still around today.

While sixteen years is impressive, there are even older torrents available on the Internet. “The Fanimatrix” torrent file holds the all-time record. It was created in September 2013 and, after being previously resurrected, continues to be available today with more than 100 people seeding.

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

New attack on home routers sends users to spoofed sites that push malware

Attack, which uses DNS hijacking, is the latest to capitalize on pandemic anxiety.

Photograph of a Linksys router.

Enlarge (credit: Wikipedia)

A recently discovered hack of home and small-office routers is redirecting users to malicious sites that pose as COVID-19 informational resources in an attempt to install malware that steals passwords and cryptocurrency credentials, researchers said on Wednesday.

A post published by security firm Bitdefender said the compromises are hitting Linksys routers, although BleepingComputer, which reported the attack two days ago, said the campaign also targets D-Link devices.

It remains unclear how attackers are compromising the routers. The researchers, citing data collected from Bitdefender security products, suspect that the hackers are guessing passwords used to secure routers’ remote management console when that feature is turned on. Bitdefender also hypothesized that compromises may be carried out by guessing credentials for users’ Linksys cloud accounts.

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The exFAT filesystem is coming to Linux—Paragon software’s not happy about it

The proprietary filesystem vendor unleashed a ’90s-level torrent of FUD yesterday.

Proprietary filesystem vendor Paragon Software seems to feel threatened by the pending inclusion of a Microsoft-sanctioned exFAT in the Linux 5.7 kernel.

Enlarge / Proprietary filesystem vendor Paragon Software seems to feel threatened by the pending inclusion of a Microsoft-sanctioned exFAT in the Linux 5.7 kernel. (credit: MTV / Geffen / Paramount Pictures)

When software and operating system giant Microsoft announced its support for inclusion of the exFAT filesystem directly into the Linux kernel back in August, it didn't get a ton of press coverage. But filesystem vendor Paragon Software clearly noticed this month's merge of the Microsoft-approved, largely Samsung-authored version of exFAT into the VFS for-next repository, which will in turn merge into Linux 5.7—and Paragon doesn't seem happy about it.

Yesterday, Paragon issued a press release about European gateway-modem vendor Sagemcom adopting its version of exFAT into an upcoming series of Linux-based routers. Unfortunately, it chose to preface the announcement with a stream of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) that wouldn't have looked out of place on Steve Ballmer's letterhead in the 1990s.

Breaking down the FUD

Paragon described its arguments against open source software—which appeared directly in my inbox—as an "article (available for publication in any form) explaining why the open source model didn't work in 3 cases."

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Microsoft begins testing new tablet UI for convertible PCs

Windows 10 has two user interfaces baked in — a desktop UI and a tablet experience. If you’re using a convertible PC with a detachable keyboard or 360-degree hinge, the operating system will ask if you want to switch from one to the other w…

Windows 10 has two user interfaces baked in — a desktop UI and a tablet experience. If you’re using a convertible PC with a detachable keyboard or 360-degree hinge, the operating system will ask if you want to switch from one to the other when you change from laptop to tablet mode and back again. […]

Few exceptions to the rule that going electric reduces emissions

Policies encouraging EVs and home heat pumps are unlikely to backfire.

An air source heat pump nestled in a nook.

Enlarge / An air source heat pump nestled in a nook. (credit: 51% Studios Architecture)

One peppy slogan for the energy revolution is to “electrify everything”—to replace fossil fuel applications with electrical devices that can be powered by a clean grid. Of course, most grids are nowhere close to emissions-free, and this can complicate the impact of electrification. With the electricity available to you, is it definitely the case that any electric car, for example, will produce fewer emissions than an efficient gas-powered vehicle?

While that question can be frustrating for a consumer, it could be even thornier for policymakers. If grids have to get cleaner for the “electrify everything” strategy to be beneficial, programs encouraging things like EVs might not have the intended effect. To provide clearer answers to this question, a team led by Florian Knobloch at Radboud University did the math to find out how green EVs and heat pumps for home heating are in different countries.

Pump up the heat

If you’re not familiar, heat pumps work on the same basic principle as an air conditioner—using refrigerant coils to dump heat from one side to the other. But instead of just dumping heat from your house into the outside air like an air conditioner does, these can also run in the other direction, dumping heat energy from the outside air (or ground) into your home—even at low outside temperatures. This process is extremely energy-efficient, even compared to high-efficiency gas furnaces.

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Microsoft says it can still make Xbox Series X despite coronavirus concerns

But the company is still watching “the demand side” and “safety in terms of people.”

Earlier this month, when Konami announced it was delaying the launch of the TurboGrafx-16 Mini, we wondered if similar supply issues caused by coronavirus-related quarantines could impact Sony's and Microsoft's planned console launches for later in the year. In an interview with CNBC yesterday, though, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the supply chain for its upcoming 2020 hardware, including the Xbox Series X, is looking relatively robust.

While Nadella wouldn't outright confirm that products like the Series X, Surface Neo, and Surface Duo tablets would launch as planned in the fourth quarter ("We'll have to check back on it"), he did say that "the supply chains are coming back. Right now, that's not our real issue." Microsoft cited its recent production of work-from-home kits demanded by newly remote workers as evidence that "we feel good about where we are in terms of manufacturing."

What might impact product launches more, Nadella warned, is "what happens in the United States, in Europe, in other developed markets around the demand side of this going forward." In other words, while Microsoft might be able to create enough new hardware in time for this holiday season, it remains to be seen whether virus-impacted economies are going to be ready to buy that hardware in sufficient quantities by then.

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