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Apple-Chef Tim Cook stellt Gesichtsschutzschilde für Mediziner vor, die der Konzern entwickelt und produziert hat. (Apple, Tim Cook)
Apple-Chef Tim Cook stellt Gesichtsschutzschilde für Mediziner vor, die der Konzern entwickelt und produziert hat. (Apple, Tim Cook)
Die Probleme mit dem ID.3 und die CO2-Vorschriften der EU haben Volkswagen wohl zum Umdenken gebracht: Der E-Golf soll weitergebaut werden. (Elektroauto, Technologie)
Die Probleme mit dem ID.3 und die CO2-Vorschriften der EU haben Volkswagen wohl zum Umdenken gebracht: Der E-Golf soll weitergebaut werden. (Elektroauto, Technologie) Disrupting a Zoom meeting could lead to “law enforcement knocking at your door.”
Enlarge (credit: Charlotte Nation / Getty)
Coronavirus-related social distancing measures have given a big popularity boost to Zoom, a video conferencing platform that's known for its ease of use but not necessarily strong security or privacy protections. Internet trolls and other troublemakers have responded with "Zoombombing": joining Zoom meetings uninvited and disrupting them. Zoombombers have exposed themselves to schoolchildren and shouted racial slurs.
In a Friday statement, federal prosecutors in Michigan warned the public that Zoombombing isn't a harmless prank; it's a crime.
"Hackers are disrupting conferences and online classrooms with pornographic and/or hate images and threatening language," wrote the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan. "Anyone who hacks into a teleconference can be charged with state or federal crimes."
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In a wave of new DMCA subpoena applications, MG Premium is hoping to discover the identities of individuals said to be responsible for pirate uploads on tube sites. However, given the way that the subpoena applications are worded, it seems likely that with assistance of Cloudflare, the adult giant is trying to unmask the operators of the sites themselves.
Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.
MG Premium, the adult entertainment giant behind brands including Reality Kings, Brazzers, MOFOS, Babes.com, and Twistys, appears to be increasing the pressure on sites that allegedly distribute its content without permission.
As previously reported, one of those targets is the massive adult tube site YesPornPlease. This February, MG Premium filed a full-blown lawsuit against the site in a Washington court, potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars. However, the action began months earlier with a DMCA subpoena directed at Cloudflare.
Through processes like this, MG Premium hopes to obtain crucial identifying information about site operators and/or uploaders. At US courts this week, MG Premium made several similar requests targeting additional adult domains, all of which use the services of Cloudflare.
The first pair of subpoenas, filed at a Washington district court, target YesPornPlease.biz and YesPornPlease.best. Whether these are directly connected to MG’s earlier target isn’t made clear in the applications but the nature of the action is obvious.
“MG is the owner of numerous copyrighted audiovisual works. In the course of protecting its works, MG has determined that infringing copies of these works, posted at the direction of individual users and without authorization from MG, appear on Cloudflare, Inc.’s website ‘yespornplease.biz’,” one of the applications reads.
MG notes that it has been sending DMCA infringement notices to Cloudflare but it is now applying for a DMCA subpoena to obtain the identity of the individuals “who are posting the infringing content.” A closer examination of the wording in the subpoena shows that this can easily extend to the site’s operators too.
“For the period January 1, 2016 through the present, produce all documents and account records that identify the person(s) or entities that caused the infringement of the material described in the attached Exhibit B DMCA notifications to the DMCA Agent for Cloudflare, Inc., and/or who unlawfully uploaded MG Premium Ltd’s copyrighted works at the URLs listed in the notifications, including but not limited to identification by names, email addresses, IP addresses, user history, posting history, physical addresses, telephone numbers, and any other identifying information,” the request reads.
An almost identical application seeks the same information relating to alleged infringers at YesPornPlease.best, a domain that appears to have been put into use around October last year.
A third application, which in most key respects is a copy of the others, targets PornDish.com. At the time of writing and according to SimilarWeb stats, this ‘tube’ site receives just under three million visits per month. Right on its front page it states that visitors can “Watch full premium Sis Loves Me, Brazzers, RealityKings, Teamskeet, Naughty America 2020 HD videos online for free!”, which is probably why MG Premium is interested in the site.
Yet another subpoena application, again filed at a Washington district court, demands the same information relating to watchxxxfree.org. According to traffic statistics, the site didn’t get any significant traction until December 2019 but steep gains since then now mean it’s pulling in around 1.4 million visits per month. This domain triggered malware warnings several times (apparently due to different threats) during our investigation so we backed away carefully.
XTapes.to, another MG Premium target, was also the subject of a cookie-cutter DMCA subpoena this week. With around 3.8 million visits in February, it’s bigger than the also-targeted XMoviesForYou.video but, unlike the latter, didn’t cause MalwareBytes to light up in panic.
Finally, MG Premium also fired off a subpoena application listing a domain called ‘PornForDays.net’ as infringing its rights. Sadly, this had us running round in circles because there is no site of that name and the domain is yet to be registered.
After closely examining additional paperwork, however, it became clear that this was in fact an error by MG Premium’s law firm. The correct domain should have been listed as the 2.9 million visits per month tube site Porn4Days.net, which also triggered malware warnings during our checks.
Where these cases will go from here remains to be seen but if MG Premium’s action against YesPornPlease is any indicator, more lawsuits could appear on the horizon.
The DMCA subpoena applications can be found here (1,2,3,4,5,6,7 (all pdf))
Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.
Every day, dozens of millions of people use BitTorrent to download and share files. Although there is a wide variety of clients to choose from, fresh data reveal that uTorrent remains the top choice for most. The competition, including Transmission and qBitTorrent, are left with a small piece of the pie, which they share with the popular Russian apps Zona and MediaGet.
Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.
The file-sharing landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade. To a certain degree, this is also true for the BitTorrent ecosystem.
Popular sites such as KickassTorrents. Torrentz.eu, and ExtraTorrent are no more, and the original YTS and EZTV groups have been long disappeared as well.
While sites have come and gone, there’s still one torrent client that the public at large prefers. When we last looked at the market share of BitTorrent clients, more than ten years ago now, uTorrent was already firmly in the lead. Today, this is no different.
With help from iknowwhatyoudownload we looked at over 25 million logged BitTorrent connections on a single day last week. This reveals that more than two-thirds (68.6%) of these were using uTorrent’s desktop version.
The vast majority of these users were updated to the most recent 3.5.5 release, but dozens of older versions are in use as well. Although no longer officially supported, there are also hundreds of thousands of people who still use uTorrent for Mac.
The most popular Mac client, however, appears to be Transmission. This is a notable change compared to a decade ago when its market share was much lower. Although Transmission also has a beta Windows release, that userbase is believed to be relatively small.
Below is an overview of all software with at least 0.1% market share* which translates to roughly 25,000 logged connections.
| Ranking | Client | Market Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| torrentfreak.com | |||
| 1 | uTorrent | 68.6% | |
| 2 | BitTorrent | 6.6% | |
| 3 | Libtorrent (uTorrent Web e.a.) | 6.3% | |
| 4 | Transmission | 5.1% | |
| 5 | MediaGet | 3.7% | |
| 6 | qBitTorrent | 3.4% | |
| 7 | Zona | 3.3% | |
| 8 | Deluge | 0.9% | |
| 9 | Bitcomet | 0.6% | |
| 10 | BiglyBT | 0.3% | |
| 11 | FDM | 0.2% | |
| 12 | BitSpirit | 0.2% | |
| 13 | BitLord | 0.1% | |
The table shows more good news for uTorrent’s parent company BitTorrent Inc., as the Mainline BitTorrent client takes second place with 6.6%. This client has a different name but is developed by the same company. It’s also pretty much identical to uTorrent in terms of code and features.
Aside from the sheer dominance of uTorrent, the appearance of Libtorrent also stands out. Although very popular, this is not a torrent client but a library that is used by a wide variety of torrent applications.
The most-used Libtorrent version is 1.2.2.0. Some follow up research revealed that this is used by the latest version of uTorrent Web. Instead of its own ‘client ID,’ the latest web version of uTorrent, which is being pushed as the main option now, identifies as Libtorrent. This means that uTorrent’s market share is even higher than the reported 69%.
Other surprising entries in the list of most-used clients are Zona and MediaGet. Both applications offer downloading and streaming functionality with an easy-to-use interface. While they are available in English, their userbases are mainly from Russia.
The list is further completed by qBitTorrent, Deluge, Free Download Manager (FDM), and BiglyBT. The latter is operated by former developers of Vuze, which was the second most-used torrent client ten years ago, but is no longer actively developed.
Other clients that were found in our sample but didn’t make the 0.1% cut are Tribler, Frostwire, Tixati, tTorrent, aTorrent, and PicoTorrent. These may still have thousands of active users on any given day, but their use pales in comparison to the top clients.
That is also true for Popcorn Time, which generated quite a bit of press attention over the years. None of the Popcorn Time forks, which identity as ‘webtorrent,’ were anywhere close to the top of the list.
The Popcorn Time observation also highlights an important caveat. The data presented here represents clients from users who are actively sharing files. If a client, such as Popcorn Time, stops seeding after a movie is done, it will no longer be logged in the following days. As such, clients used by people who continue to seed files may be somewhat overrepresented.
We are planning to repeat these and similar analyses more frequently in the future, so we can spot more trends. However, it’s quite clear that uTorrent is not going to give up its top spot anytime soon.
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*BitTorrent clients are identified through the ‘client ID’ which is publicly broadcasted to trackers and over DHT. The totals reported here are based on a sample of the client IDs with at least 10,000 connections. After that, different versions of the same client were added up.
Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.
Over the past few years smartphone makers have declared war on bezels. The black borders that surround displays have gotten smaller… and phone makers have found new places for the fingerprint sensors and cameras that used to hang out in those bor…
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Expensive SUVs are just more popular than big expensive sedans these days.
Fewer than 3,000 A8s found homes in the US in 2019, because almost everyone who buys vehicles like this has switched to luxury SUVs instead. [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]
The flagship sedan has been one of the more tragic victims of the SUV craze. Cars like the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, BMW 7 Series, and the Audi A8 used to be considered the ultimate expression of a carmaker's craft. Advanced technologies like anti-lock brakes, airbags, and infotainment systems would show up in these expensive machines years before they trickled down to the rest of us. But two decades into the 21st century, sedans are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Much of the most interesting new car technology—to us at least—is now found in plug-in powertrains, and in the mass-market, like the Model 3, Polestar 2, or VW's ID family. So each year, fewer and fewer flagship sedans find homes, particularly as those same OEMs offer supersized luxury SUVs as well.
The A8 is a perfect example. Despite its Ronin connection, the biggest Audi has never been as popular as the S-Class, 7 Series, or Lexus LS. In 2019, the first full calendar year when the car was on sale in the United States, Audi sold 2,963 A8s. Over the same 12 months, the company sold 14,256 Q8s, the five-seat range-topping SUV that gets all the same gadgets but in much more on-trend packaging. You should be able to read Managing Editor Eric Bangeman's review of that SUV in the next few weeks, but having sampled both vehicles from the driver's seat and also riding as a passenger in the back, my take is that the sedan should come out ahead on both counts.
Despite its 17.3-foot (5.3m) length and 6.3-foot (1.9m) width, you only have to drive an A8 for a day or two before its bulk seems to shrink around you. And a curb weight of at least 4,773lbs (2,164kg) for the lightest variant (the $85,200 A8 55 TFSI, which uses a 3.0L V6 gasoline engine) makes it no featherweight, but it feels nimble nonetheless. And as long as you tick the $3,500 option for the rear-seat comfort package, the back seat of an A8 will outdo many business-class airline seats when it comes to comfort and adjustability, with heating, ventilation, and lumbar massages thrown in.
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Swapping out spent uranium rods requires hundreds of technicians—challenging right now.
Enlarge / The Palo Verde Nuclear generating plant, the nation's largest nuclear power plant. (credit: Jeff Topping / Getty)
Each spring, nearly 1,000 highly specialized technicians from around the US descend on the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station near Phoenix, Arizona, to refuel one of the plant’s three nuclear reactors. As America’s largest power plant—nuclear or otherwise—Palo Verde provides around-the-clock power to 4 million people in the Southwest. Even under normal circumstances, refueling one of its reactors is a laborious, month-long process. But now that the US is in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, the plant operators have had to adapt their refueling plans.
Palo Verde is expected to begin refueling one of its reactors in early April—a spokesperson for Arizona Public Service, the utility that operates the plant, declined to give an exact start date—but the preparations began months in advance. The uranium fuel started arriving at the plant last autumn, delivered in the cargo bay of an unmarked semi truck. The fuel arrives ready for the reactor as 1,000-pound rectangular bundles of uranium rods that are 12 feet tall and about 6 inches on each side.
The latest shipment of fuel arrived at the plant well before the coronavirus pandemicbrought the world to a standstill, says Greg Cameron, the nuclear communications director at Palo Verde. The biggest change with this refueling cycle, he says, is the scope of the operation. “We’ve tried to trim down the amount of work to just what is necessary to ensure that we run for the next 18 months without impacting the reliability of the plant,” Cameron says.
Each of Palo Verde’s three nuclear reactors are ensconced in their own bulbous concrete sarcophagus and operate almost entirely independent of one another. This allows plant operators to periodically take one of the reactors offline for refueling and maintenance without totally disrupting the flow of energy to the grid. Each reactor is partially refueled every year and a half, with about one-third of the fuel in the reactor core being swapped out for a fresh batch.
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Apple-Chef Tim Cook stellt Gesichtsschutzschilde für Mediziner vor, die der Konzern entwickelt und produziert hat. (
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