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Die Open-RAN-Branche will die US-amerikanische Vorherrschaft bei 5G. Wettbewerber sollen ausgeschaltet werden, auch aus Europa. (Open RAN, Server)
Modyplast hat eine Serie von Fahrradanhängern vorgestellt, in denen eine Person übernachten kann. Der Camper wiegt zwischen 40 und 50 Kilogramm. (E-Bike, Technologie)
Modyplast hat eine Serie von Fahrradanhängern vorgestellt, in denen eine Person übernachten kann. Der Camper wiegt zwischen 40 und 50 Kilogramm. (E-Bike, Technologie) Pros: Fully customizable, super trippy. Cons: The usual Kickstarter small-team caveats.
The Pixels Dice, special pre-alpha edition, as tested by Sam Machkovech. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]
Oh, Kickstarter: the land of wild, wacky promises and broken dreams, where products that could've been imagined during a productive shower or a psychedelic trip can become a reality, logistics and physics be damned. As we've written and seen, however, it's a dangerous space for consumers, so much so that Kickstarter warns customers that it's not technically a "store." You give Kickstarter money, and it gives you the potential to receive goods or services.
Hence, we prefer to test a mid-Kickstarter product before telling you about it, and that's the case for Pixels Dice, as seen in the above shiny-and-alluring images. Full of sensors, LEDs, and Bluetooth functionality, these dice sounded like the smartest addition to a tabletop game I'd ever seen when they contended for the 2019 Hackaday Prize. Upon getting my hopes up, I emailed their creator a cold-call request: whenever Pixels Dice actually exist, I want to test their sales pitch.
One very long year later, a package showed up at my door, and it contained two prototype, 20-sided Pixels Dice—currently priced at $39 per die, or $199 for a seven-dice set. Now that the project's Kickstarter is live, and (as of press time) teetering towards $3 million in sales, I wanted to share my prototype testing experience, along with my somewhat optimistic take on what to expect from the final version, currently estimated to ship in "March 2022."
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SXSW documentary captures ordinary people daring something truly extraordinary
Danielle Kummer and Lucy Harvey produced and directed the charming documentary Alien on Stage.
Imagine if your amateur high school theatrical production was suddenly asked to perform on Broadway, with just a few weeks to prepare. That's the kind of thing that typically provides fodder for anxiety dreams. But in Alien on Stage, a group of British bus drivers overcomes the odds to bring their amateur production of Ridley Scott's classic 1979 science fiction horror film Alien to London's West End. This winsome documentary made its international premiere at the virtual SXSW festival last week.
Per the official premise:
This is a story about a unique crew of Dorset bus drivers whose amateur dramatics group decide to ditch doing another pantomime and try something different. Having never done anything like it before, they spent a year creating a serious adaptation of the sci-fi, horror film, Alien; finding ingenious solutions to pay homemade, homage to the original film. The show is a crushing flop but fate gives them a second chance to find their audience.
Whilst still adjusting to the idea that their serious show is actually a comedy, the group find out they’re suddenly being whisked from their village hall to a London West End theatre to perform this accidental masterpiece for one night only. With wobbly sets, awkward acting and special effects requiring "more luck than judgement," will their West End debut be alright on the night? This bus driving crew are our space heroes. Their bus station is our space station. Dorset is outer-space and where is the Alien? It’s behind you!
The amateur company in question call themselves Paranoid Dramatics, and most of the members are employed by the Wilts and Dorset Bus Company. When we first meet them, they've been putting on annual holiday pantomimes locally for several years as a creative outlet, with proceeds going to charity. Their production of Robin Hood in particular proved to be a smashing success with the locals.
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Reibungslose Lieferketten sind Grundlage eines florierenden Welthandels. Was aber, wenn ein Containerschiff in einem Kanal stecken bleibt und damit hunderte Handelsschiffe blockiert?
Nach einem leichten Unfall saßen die jugendlichen Passagiere auf dem Beifahrersitz und dem Rücksitz und behaupteten, der Tesla sei autonom gefahren. (Autonomes Fahren, Technologie)
Nach einem leichten Unfall saßen die jugendlichen Passagiere auf dem Beifahrersitz und dem Rücksitz und behaupteten, der Tesla sei autonom gefahren. (Autonomes Fahren, Technologie) In 2019, a video of a man headbutting a restaurant worker in the face went viral. Months later the incident reentered the public consciousness when a wave of DMCA notices targeted sites that reported on the news. It’s now close to two years after the initial incident and some people still aren’t getting the message. Sending bogus DMCA notices to erase the past is not an effective solution.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
There’s a very good chance that thousands of readers will already be familiar with the antics of one Mr. Joel Singer and his nemesis, Steve Heflin. Thousands will have forgotten. Thousands more will be hearing about this debacle for the first time.
The short story is easy to tell. In 2019, Steve Heflin was on business in Fort Lauderdale to interview a prospective employee with a view to hiring him as a new salesman for his Internet infrastructure company. During a visit to a local bar, Steve observed “two guys in suits” sitting at the bar, one of whom was Joel Singer.
According to Steve, Singer was drunk, and when the valet refused to return Mr. Singer’s keys, advising him to get an Uber instead, an altercation broke out. In short, Mr. Singer headbutted a restaurant worker in the face, Heflin took the assailant to the ground, and the whole thing was filmed by a third-party and ended up on YouTube.
So why would we be interested in this event? Well, someone later decided that this negative publicity needed to be erased from the Internet, from every nook and cranny, using copyright law. As previously reported, DMCA notices were liberally filed in an effort to remove every video, news article, report, and search result that referenced the event.
Of course, this campaign was totally counterproductive. After most people had consigned the event to their mental history books, here it was back in the news again, prompting yet more people to repost the video, start more social media threads about Mr. Singer, and relive the Internet drama all over again. And again…and again.
As per usual, the whole thing fizzled out but some people cannot let things rest.
We didn’t mention it at the time because the story was effectively done and Mr. Singer and his adventures were yesterday’s news. However, in July 2020, a number of sites – Reddit and TorrentFreak included – were targeted in another wave of DMCA notices and other copyright complaints (examples here)
These sought the removal of our article and various Reddit threads from Google but whoever sent them didn’t want to be identified, since they were sent under the name “.TEC.LAW.“, an entity that doesn’t appear to exist. Since Google appeared to be rejecting most of the notices, we let things slide and got on with more important things. Sadly, someone had other ideas.
As can be seen from this page on the Lumen Database, an entity identifying itself as “TECH LAW” began sending another wave of notices targeted hundreds upon hundreds of URLs that allegedly referenced the infamous attack back in the summer of 2019. According to many of the takedown requests, the reason for deletion is as follows (no errors corrected):
The photographs of the video of Joel Micheal Singer in restaurant URL below or “JoelMichaelSinger” is infringed by the text excerpted on the site, beginning with the text Joel Michael Singer assaults two innocent people at a store .” “Who is Joel Michael Singer?
To be clear, we have not checked every single URL for infringement. However, what we can confirm is that many of these URLs contain a photograph of Mr. Singer that someone, somewhere, holds the copyright to. The argument over whether other sites can or cannot repost that image in various contexts is a battle they can have with the copyright holder.
However, many of the links also lead to the video of the attack and it is yet to be established who owns the rights to that recording. Steve Heflin says that Mr. Singer could not have filmed it himself, since he had his face pressed into the floor. It is possible, of course, that Mr. Singer has since obtained exclusive rights to it. Maybe we’ll never know.
That being said, some things are much more clean-cut.
This week, the Lumen Database published a new DMCA notice filed by a mysterious entity called TEKKLAWWZ.Z on behalf of the previously mentioned TECH LAW. It targets more than 70 URLs that allegedly contain a copyrighted image of Mr. Singer.
“Digital image. Property of TEKKLAWW not authorized for reuse or pecuniary gain. Headshot not authorized to be used by any third party,” the notice begins.
Again, some of the pages do indeed carry the image of Mr. Singer, potentially in breach of copyright. However, many do not, such as these negative ‘reviews‘ on BirdEye.com or this page on Urban Dictionary.
But of course, the takedown attempt we were most disappointed to learn of targeted the article published by TorrentFreak last summer. We have been targeted before so perhaps at this point, it’s best to put our cards on the table for absolute clarity.
Our article does not carry the ‘headshot’ of Mr. Singer and never did. The video of the altercation appears as a link to YouTube, which is required to support the text of the article. And, to be very specific, our original reporting did not even mention Mr. Singer by name.
So, in the likely event the notice senders still haven’t managed to connect the dots, perhaps we should spell it out: There is no copyright infringement here and there never has been.
This is what is known as an abuse of the DMCA and if there is something we are interested in reporting here at TF, it’s abuses of the DMCA. We sincerely hope we don’t have to do a follow-up, the Streisand Effect has had more than enough fuel on this topic.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In 2019, a video of a man headbutting a restaurant worker in the face went viral. Months later the incident reentered the public consciousness when a wave of DMCA notices targeted sites that reported on the news. It’s now close to two years after the initial incident and some people still aren’t getting the message. Sending bogus DMCA notices to erase the past is not an effective solution.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
There’s a very good chance that thousands of readers will already be familiar with the antics of one Mr. Joel Singer and his nemesis, Steve Heflin. Thousands will have forgotten. Thousands more will be hearing about this debacle for the first time.
The short story is easy to tell. In 2019, Steve Heflin was on business in Fort Lauderdale to interview a prospective employee with a view to hiring him as a new salesman for his Internet infrastructure company. During a visit to a local bar, Steve observed “two guys in suits” sitting at the bar, one of whom was Joel Singer.
According to Steve, Singer was drunk, and when the valet refused to return Mr. Singer’s keys, advising him to get an Uber instead, an altercation broke out. In short, Mr. Singer headbutted a restaurant worker in the face, Heflin took the assailant to the ground, and the whole thing was filmed by a third-party and ended up on YouTube.
So why would we be interested in this event? Well, someone later decided that this negative publicity needed to be erased from the Internet, from every nook and cranny, using copyright law. As previously reported, DMCA notices were liberally filed in an effort to remove every video, news article, report, and search result that referenced the event.
Of course, this campaign was totally counterproductive. After most people had consigned the event to their mental history books, here it was back in the news again, prompting yet more people to repost the video, start more social media threads about Mr. Singer, and relive the Internet drama all over again. And again…and again.
As per usual, the whole thing fizzled out but some people cannot let things rest.
We didn’t mention it at the time because the story was effectively done and Mr. Singer and his adventures were yesterday’s news. However, in July 2020, a number of sites – Reddit and TorrentFreak included – were targeted in another wave of DMCA notices and other copyright complaints (examples here)
These sought the removal of our article and various Reddit threads from Google but whoever sent them didn’t want to be identified, since they were sent under the name “.TEC.LAW.“, an entity that doesn’t appear to exist. Since Google appeared to be rejecting most of the notices, we let things slide and got on with more important things. Sadly, someone had other ideas.
As can be seen from this page on the Lumen Database, an entity identifying itself as “TECH LAW” began sending another wave of notices targeted hundreds upon hundreds of URLs that allegedly referenced the infamous attack back in the summer of 2019. According to many of the takedown requests, the reason for deletion is as follows (no errors corrected):
The photographs of the video of Joel Micheal Singer in restaurant URL below or “JoelMichaelSinger” is infringed by the text excerpted on the site, beginning with the text Joel Michael Singer assaults two innocent people at a store .” “Who is Joel Michael Singer?
To be clear, we have not checked every single URL for infringement. However, what we can confirm is that many of these URLs contain a photograph of Mr. Singer that someone, somewhere, holds the copyright to. The argument over whether other sites can or cannot repost that image in various contexts is a battle they can have with the copyright holder.
However, many of the links also lead to the video of the attack and it is yet to be established who owns the rights to that recording. Steve Heflin says that Mr. Singer could not have filmed it himself, since he had his face pressed into the floor. It is possible, of course, that Mr. Singer has since obtained exclusive rights to it. Maybe we’ll never know.
That being said, some things are much more clean-cut.
This week, the Lumen Database published a new DMCA notice filed by a mysterious entity called TEKKLAWWZ.Z on behalf of the previously mentioned TECH LAW. It targets more than 70 URLs that allegedly contain a copyrighted image of Mr. Singer.
“Digital image. Property of TEKKLAWW not authorized for reuse or pecuniary gain. Headshot not authorized to be used by any third party,” the notice begins.
Again, some of the pages do indeed carry the image of Mr. Singer, potentially in breach of copyright. However, many do not, such as these negative ‘reviews‘ on BirdEye.com or this page on Urban Dictionary.
But of course, the takedown attempt we were most disappointed to learn of targeted the article published by TorrentFreak last summer. We have been targeted before so perhaps at this point, it’s best to put our cards on the table for absolute clarity.
Our article does not carry the ‘headshot’ of Mr. Singer and never did. The video of the altercation appears as a link to YouTube, which is required to support the text of the article. And, to be very specific, our original reporting did not even mention Mr. Singer by name.
So, in the likely event the notice senders still haven’t managed to connect the dots, perhaps we should spell it out: There is no copyright infringement here and there never has been.
This is what is known as an abuse of the DMCA and if there is something we are interested in reporting here at TF, it’s abuses of the DMCA. We sincerely hope we don’t have to do a follow-up, the Streisand Effect has had more than enough fuel on this topic.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In fünf Jahren gelang noch keine Ausschreibung für die allgemeinbildenden Schulen in Berlin. (Politik/Recht, Glasfaser)
In fünf Jahren gelang noch keine Ausschreibung für die allgemeinbildenden Schulen in Berlin. (Politik/Recht, Glasfaser) Claims they remove 99% of viruses are unproven; cheaper air filters are more effective.
Enlarge (credit: Robin Eckenroth | Getty Images)
Last fall, Jeff Kreiter, director of operational services for the school district in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, found himself flooded with proposals to clean the air inside classrooms. The ideas varied—UV lights, air exchangers, a wide array of filters—but one looked especially promising: a bipolar ionizer. The system involved a set of electrified tubes, placed in air ducts, that would flood the buildings with charged particles, or ions. Marketing materials from the company AtmosAir promised that this would eliminate pollutants and viruses by emulating the ion-rich air found in an alpine village. The district paid a local vendor $2 million to install the system in 33 school buildings. “Ultimately we wanted to kill the virus and have a healthier environment, but we wanted this long-term and not just for corona,” Kreiter says.
The science behind those ion-producing tubes reads like an elegant example from a high school textbook. The ions are meant to induce what chemists call “coagulation.” Like blood cells clotting a wound, particles of opposite charge glom together, capturing nasty things that you don’t want in your lungs, like pollen and mold. Eventually, those clumps grow large enough that gravity takes over and they fall harmlessly to the ground. With viruses, there’s another benefit: the ions gum up surface proteins used to enter cells, making them less effective invaders. The result, and the banner claim made in the company’s pitch to schools during the pandemic, is a 99.92 percent reduction in coronavirus within 30 minutes.
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Die Open-RAN-Branche will die US-amerikanische Vorherrschaft bei 5G. Wettbewerber sollen ausgeschaltet werden, auch aus Europa. (
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