April 2021 – Page 113 – news.buyenne.com

Diablo II Resurrected impressions: Unholy cow, man

Blizzard Classic follows WarCraft III‘s utter failure with an udder success.

Diablo II: Resurrected is slated to launch on PC and consoles "later this year," but in the meantime, the remaster is far enough along that its handlers launched an early "technical alpha" demo over this weekend. (There's a teensy, tiny chance you can still get in if you sign up right now.) I was invited for the single-player test's first wave—and took the opportunity to stream my initial gameplay via Twitch.

Should you watch that three-hour session, you'll see my largely positive reaction at first blush. (Once some initial online-check stupidity cleared up, at least.) Afterwards, I took a moment to breathe, have a snack, and install the game on other systems in order to do some more fully fledged testing.

Even outside that first-look afterglow, of seeing D2:R running beautifully on a modern PC, the results thus far—of an admittedly unfinished preview version—have charmed me even further than my first session might have led you to believe. The "Blizzard Classic" team is currently walking on a long road into hell, and that road just might be paved with redemption.

Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Anschlagspläne: Texaner wollte Amazon-Rechenzentrum in die Luft sprengen

Beim Kauf des Sprengstoffs wurde der Mann festgenommen. Auf ihn aufmerksam wurde das FBI durch einen Tipp. (AWS, Amazon)

Nigerian ‘Scam Artist’ Used Apple, Amazon and Tidal to Cash in on Pirated Music

An aspiring Nigerian musician named Wisekid copied an album from one of Africa’s biggest artists Wizkid, reportedly passing it off as his own. By uploading the ‘pirated’ album to music services such as Apple Music, Amazon and Tidal, the scammer appears to have earned substantial revenue.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

wisekid Legal streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music have been the music industry’s most effective weapon against piracy.

Many people don’t even bother ripping or downloading albums of tracks nowadays. The legal alternatives are just more convenient.

Despite this success, legal streaming platforms have their challenges as well. For years, artists have complained about low payouts. And to make things worse, ‘pirates’ are starting to abuse legal services as well now.

Pirated Music on Legal Streaming Services

A few weeks ago we reported that the RIAA was sending DMCA takedown notices that targeted Spotify, Deezer, Amazon, and various other legal music outlets. Apparently, some artists were using the works of others without permission.

At the time we weren’t sure if this was intentional or a mere licensing dispute. The RIAA didn’t respond to our questions on the matter. However, this week we spotted yet another takedown notice and, this time, there is more of a backstory.

On Wednesday the RIAA sent a takedown notice to Google identifying several infringing URLs on the legal streaming service Tidal. The links point to tracks that were published by Nigerian artist Wisekid but, according to the takedown request, they are from the local music star Wizkid.

Wisekid Rips Off Wizkid

Looking more closely at the matter, we quickly noticed that Wisekid appeared to have uploaded an entire album from Wizkid, passing it off as his own.

The album in question, titled “Lasgidi Made” is the same as Wizkid’s “Made in Lagos,” but the track order and titles have been changed, apparently to make the similarity less obvious.

This ‘pirated’ album made its way onto popular music services including Apple Music, Amazon, and Tidal, and reportedly generated substantial revenue for the scam artist.

Millions of Streams

Apparently, Wisekid was quite proud of his accomplishments as he posted a screenshot on Twitter showing off that he had millions of streams and more than a thousand digital sales on Apple’s service. This is when things started to go downhill.

Several commenters on social media noticed the similarities between Wizkid and Wisekid, accusing the latter of running a scam and ripping off a hard-working musician.

Wisekid, however, claimed to be innocent. Instead, he indirectly blamed his distribution company “Freeme Digital” for being responsible. Or in his own words (edited for readability);

“I don’t know who did that. I just accessed my apple artist name I saw streams. I just wanted to get people to check me out nothing more,” he wrote.

“Freeme Digital is the company that distributes all my songs. I’m just an upcoming artist and I know nothing about this. Please, I am not the one distributing Wizkid’s album on apple music.”

Deny and Delete

Soon after, the news was picked up by the Nigerian press while Wisekid removed his Twitter profile. Around the same time, the distribution company responded to the controversy, denying any involvement.

While Freeme Digital indeed worked with Wisekid, the company said that the ‘Lasgidi Made’ album was not distributed via their platform. The company also decided to cut its ties with the artist.

“We will be deleting the rest of Wisekid’s content on our platform and we have informed our legal team to immediately commence investigation on the issue and prosecute the matter to the full extent of the law.”

Removing Pirated music (and More)

Meanwhile, Wizkid’s management said it was working hard to take down the illegal uploads across all digital platforms. The RIAA helped out as well, which brings us back to the takedown notice we spotted on Wednesday.

In addition to the RIAA, UK-based industry group BPI also sent a takedown notice identifying Wisekid’s infringing upload. Sadly, this notice also flagged several news reports as copyright infringement, but that’s a different rabbit hole.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Variant hunters race to find new strains where variant testing lags

Scientists across Africa are collaborating to track them down.

In mid-February, three travelers were stopped at the airport in Luanda, Angola. Even during the pandemic, the country, a hub for the oil industry, had seen plenty of passengers from Europe and South Africa, where two concerning variants of the virus that causes Covid-19 hold sway. But the strains weren’t yet circulating widely in Angola, so this winter, health officials battened down the hatches. Before any passports get stamped, travelers receive a rapid antigen test and wait 30 minutes for a result. A negative test means self-quarantine, followed by another test a few days later. A positive test means a two-week stay at a quarantine hotel. For the three travelers, it was option two.

A few weeks later, samples taken from their noses arrived 2,000 miles south in South Africa, at the lab of Tulio de Oliveira, a geneticist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He was in for a surprise. The virus that had infected these three travelers didn’t resemble the strains circulating in most other places, including those labeled as “variants of concern” for their ability to spread faster and evade certain types of immunity. If those variants are like siblings, this one was more like a forgotten second cousin. It came from a lineage of the virus that emerged in the early days of the pandemic but had disappeared soon thereafter, apparently outcompeted by other variants. And yet here it was, a year later. And it had been busy. The virus had since accumulated dozens of mutations, including many of the same ones that made those other strains worrisome because of increased transmissibility and immune evasion. It had arrived at a similar genetic conclusion all on its own.