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Der Druck auf die Gewerkschaften wächst, Streiks können derzeit nicht organisiert werden, kritisiert wird, dass Baustellen für Luxuswohnungen oder Atomkraftwerke wieder in Betrieb genommen werden
We’re all stuck at home, but no one’s gone stir crazy enough to try Dwarf Fortress (yet).
While it's hard to see much upside in our current COVID-19 pandemic, there's at least one group for whom maybe quarantine life isn't all that bad—gamers. Maybe you finally have the time (and nothing else to do) to work your way through some 100-hour plus campaign or to retrieve every star in Mario 64. Or, as someone with a partner/roommate/kid, maybe you suddenly never get a chance to game by yourself and have newly been embracing the joys of co-op and multiplayer more than you ever imagined. (Alternatively, maybe you're sticking to whatever handheld isolation you can find instead under such circumstance.) Heck, maybe you're just so bored you decided to finally torture yourself through Dwarf Fortress' initial learning curve.
No matter how you slice it, video games have been one of the most reliable forms of at-home entertainment in both the best of times and the worst of times. So although sheltering-in-place has altered many aspects of life in unquestionably negative ways, around Ars we've stumbled into some gaming silver linings over the last month-plus. Here's what's been keeping our thumbs active in these quartan-times when the work keyboards have retired for the day.
Srsly, how can you say no?
My name is Nathan, I'm one of the fools who waffled on acquiring a Switch and now lacks any modern gaming device mid-quarantine. I've forever been a console player, and over the years as consoles gained connectivity they've become one of the easiest ways to regularly connect with my younger siblings. But here we are. I guess we'll have to... talk? Scattergories works over video chat, at least.
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Patterns of marks on bones show evidence of archery, horseback riding
Enlarge / Skeletal remains from a husband/wife burial (wife is on the left). Airagiin Gozgor site, Orkhon Province, Mongolia. (credit: Christine Lee)
The story of Mulan, a young woman who disguises herself as a man to fight for China's emperor, has become one of best known and most beloved narratives worldwide, thanks in no small part to Disney. The Mouse House's 1998 animated film, Mulan, grossed $304 million worldwide and earned Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. The forthcoming live action version—delayed due to the pandemic—looks to exceed that performance when it is finally released. (It is currently slated for July 24, 2020.)
It's long been thought that Mulan was based on actual female warriors of the Xianbei, an ancient nomadic people from modern-day Mongolia and northeastern China. Now, anthropologists believe they may have found physical evidence of such warrior women in skeletal remains found in that region.
The Chinese legend of Mulan first appears in several ancient texts, eventually becoming a folk song, "The Ballad of Hua Mulan," transcribed sometime in the sixth century. It tells the story of a young woman in the Northern Wei era, spanning 386-536 CE, although some details were added later, around 620 CE, during the Tang dynasty. She takes her father's place when each family is required to provide one male to serve in the emperor's army. Hua Mulan serves for 12 years with none of her fellow soldiers ever suspecting her true gender. Later versions of the legend appeared in the late Ming dynasty, followed by a 1593 play by Xu Wei, and the Sui Tang Romance, a 17th century tragic novel by Chu Renhuo. In that, Mulan has a younger sister and bonds with a fellow female warrior named Xianniang.
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Die Entwicklung eines Künstlerprotests am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz zeigt, dass verbale Abgrenzung nicht ausreicht, um Rechte von Protesten gegen den autoritären Staat fernzuhalten
Wenn Fähren nicht fahren, fliegen Drohnen auf die Insel Wight. (Drohne, Technologie)
Cardboard meets conservation.
Enlarge / Photosynthesis, the game. (credit: Dan Thurot)
Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.
The other day, I thought my six-year-old was about to pop one of those questions every parent dreads answering. With a reverentially serious tone, she asked, “Daddy, I have a question I been thinking about a long time...”—cue a pause long enough to stop my heart—“Do snails leave their slime on rocks forever?”
Whew. So she wasn’t awake during last week’s parent-on-parent hour.
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Ein Dokument der Republikaner empfiehlt, wie China in aller Schärfe bloß gestellt werden kann – und soll
Tesla will das Elektroauto Cybertruck ab 2021 produzieren. Aber nicht in Kalifornien. (Tesla, Technologie)
Tesla will das Elektroauto Cybertruck ab 2021 produzieren. Aber nicht in Kalifornien. (Tesla, Technologie) EU law enforcement agency Europol is warning citizens to stay away from pirate IPTV services during the coronavirus pandemic. While part of the message includes the usual cautions over potential malware and security issues, the agency says that the services are maintaining high-quality video streams and offering a wider range of content due to a lack of sports broadcasts.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.
From a standing start just few short years ago, pirate IPTV services are now just a few clicks away for anyone determined to obtain a subscription.
Packages start at pocket-money prices of just a few dollars, euros, or pounds each month and in return, subscribers are treated to packages that can include up to thousands of otherwise premium channels, plus PPV events.
One of the big draws is live sporting events, which goes a long way to explaining why companies like the Premier League are determined to disrupt IPTV providers. However, during the more or less global coronavirus lockdown, sports are a major casualty, meaning that everyone from the Premier League to the NBA, NFL and UFC aren’t putting out any new content at all.
While this is a serious problem for the sports organizations and traditional broadcasters, this week EU law enforcement agency Europol inadvertently pointed out something that looks like a bit of an own goal. Due to the current restrictions, pirate IPTV services are apparently stepping up their game to ensure that subscribing to them remains attractive to the public at large.
In an advisory covering streaming but majoring on ‘pirate’ IPTV, Europol warned that due to millions of people being locked down, many will turn to online entertainment outlets to cope with social isolation. If that choice involves an illegal service, consumers have at least a couple of things to look forward to.
“Criminals are quickly adapting their activities, offering high-quality stream[s] while legitimate providers have agreed to reduce stream quality due to EU broadband overload,” Europol writes.
This is an obvious reference to Netflix which agreed last month to reduce the bitrate of streams for 30 days in an effort to reduce the load on the Internet in Europe. Europol’s aim, it seems, is to portray pirate services as behaving irresponsibly towards the yet-to-emerge Internet capacity crisis. Counter-intuitively, however, it seems to suggest that if people want high-quality video, pirate sources are a good option.
While pirate suppliers could probably care less about available bandwidth, the vast majority of suppliers don’t provide content in anywhere near the highest quality available via Netflix. Certainly, true 4K streams are so rare as to seem non-existent, so the claim they’re using up too much bandwidth seems a little picky in the scheme of things.
Additionally, Europol goes on to inadvertently highlight another benefit of using pirate services – content choice. While mainstream subscription TV companies are struggling to fill in the gaps, especially those created by a lack of live sporting content, the EU law enforcement agency claims that pirate suppliers are actually upping their game by offering “more content variety to compensate [for] the lack of sport events.”
While both of these claims sound like reasons for people to take interest in pirate suppliers rather than stay away, Europol also balances things out with a number of warnings. These take the form of the standard caveats regularly cited by the entertainment industries, including malicious software infecting devices, ‘criminals’ stealing payment credentials, and bank accounts getting compromised.
As is common with these types of warnings, the standard advice from Europol doesn’t highlight how these things happen or how they can be prevented. The agency simply states that people should stay away from pirate services which would work, as would staying off the Internet completely. However, with most (but not all) users enjoying the benefits trouble-free, the warnings may not have much of an effect. That’s not to say that Europol doesn’t have some genuinely good advice in other areas though.
While there is no single piece of guidance that covers all streaming apps, the agency warns that people are probably better off not accessing “free IPTV platforms”. They don’t give a specific reason why but it is true that users could do worse than to consider how free IPTV services, usually supplied via apps, are funding their operations.
Much like free VPNs, there will be a cost somewhere, whether that’s intrusive or lots of advertising or, as Europol points out, potentially crypto-miners or other software that most people would prefer not to have on their machines. But sound advice from the law enforcement agency doesn’t stop there.
“Don’t share your phone number, email address or contact details with unofficial streaming platforms,” Europol warns.
While casual users might think that handing over such information is required, it shouldn’t be shared under any circumstances. Whether it’s a ‘reputable’ pirate IPTV supplier or one seeking to monetize free streams, no supplier needs to know a user’s personal details.
Fake names, phone numbers, temporary email addresses and imaginary physical addresses are never a problem for ‘reputable’ pirate suppliers because they have no interest in any of this information. Many use standard platforms that request it as part of the sign-up process but the information (email address aside) is never used to make contact or deliver goods.
Equally, providing fake details to a malicious third-party effectively gives them nothing, which is exactly what many savvy users already do with Internet-based services they are unsure of, whether that’s an IPTV provider or anything else for that matter.
Finally, Europol mentions something that cannot be disputed. While giving money to Netflix means that you will get precisely what you pay for, subscribing to pirate IPTV services directly or through a reseller is always a gamble. Either can disappear at any time taking subscribers’ money with them and many do.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.
People who’ve lost jobs and are stuck indoors are turning to crowd work.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
B.C. Kowalski, a writer at the local weekly in Wausau, Wisconsin, was expecting a boost to his income this spring. He was set to begin selling ads for local businesses on a podcast he’d launched on the side, Keep it Wausome. Then coronavirus restrictions shut down the town and its businesses.
To keep some extra dollars coming in, Kowalski has turned to Amazon’s crowd-work platform Mechanical Turk, where companies offer cents or dollars for small tasks such as labeling photos, transcribing audio clips, or answering survey questions.
Diane Brewer, who lives in Florida, is also counting on Mechanical Turk, as well as another crowd-work site called Prolific, where workers are paid to fill out surveys for academia and market research. She previously turned to crowd work during spells as a stay-at-home mom and convalescing after a car crash. Covid-19 convinced Brewer it was time to start again “to add some dollars to an uncertain future,” she says. Her long-term boyfriend works as a carpenter. “That may be an issue in the near future, because who is going to buy a house anytime soon?” she asks.
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Wenn Fähren nicht fahren, fliegen Drohnen auf die Insel Wight. (
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