Allianz gegen den "Drogenkommunismus"

Die ultrarechte Vox-Partei aus Spanien sucht die Allianz mit der konservativen PAN in Mexiko. Das Ziel: dem “Kommunismus” transatlantisch Einhalt gebieten und den politischen Diskurs verschieben

Die ultrarechte Vox-Partei aus Spanien sucht die Allianz mit der konservativen PAN in Mexiko. Das Ziel: dem "Kommunismus" transatlantisch Einhalt gebieten und den politischen Diskurs verschieben

Chip-Knappheit: Skoda baut 100.000 Autos weniger

Weil es an Chips mangelt, sinkt bei Skoda die Anzahl der gebauten Fahrzeuge um ein Neuntel – allerdings ist etwas Besserung in Sicht. (Skoda, Auto)

Weil es an Chips mangelt, sinkt bei Skoda die Anzahl der gebauten Fahrzeuge um ein Neuntel - allerdings ist etwas Besserung in Sicht. (Skoda, Auto)

The World’s Oldest Active Torrent Turns 18 Soon

The world’s oldest active torrent file turns 18 years old this month and it’s still being seeded by dozens of people. “The Fanimatrix” torrent was published in 2003 when BitTorrent was still a relatively new protocol. At the time, the torrent’s creator saw it as the only affordable option to share the Matrix fan film with the world.

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

fanimatrixBitTorrent is an excellent distribution mechanism but, for a file to live on, at least one person has to keep sharing it.

This means that most torrents eventually die after the public loses interest. However, some torrents seem to live on forever.

The Fanimatrix

The oldest surviving torrent we can identify is a copy of the Matrix fan film “Fanimatrix.” The torrent was created in September 2003, which means that it will turn 18 this month. A remarkable achievement.

The film was shot by a group of New Zealand friends. With a limited budget of just $800, nearly half of which was spent on a leather jacket, they managed to complete the project in nine days.

While shooting the film was possible with these financial constraints, sharing it with the world was a bigger challenge. At the time there were no free video-sharing services and YouTube had yet to be invented.

No Money For Distribution

Hosting the film on a private server wasn’t an option either. Bandwith was still very expensive, especially in New Zealand. If the project was to be a success, the friends would have to pay many thousands of dollars extra to distribute it.

This is when one of the friends, Sebastian Kai Frost, went looking for other options. Frost had a bit part in the film and also operated as the ‘IT-guy’. After searching for solutions, he eventually stumbled upon a new technology called BitTorrent.

“It looked promising because it scaled such that the more popular the file became, the more the bandwidth load was shared. It seemed like the perfect solution,” Frost told us earlier.

BitTorrent To the Rescue

This was exactly what was needed to get the Fanimatrix published worldwide. So, after Frost got the green light from the rest of the crew he created a torrent on September 28, 2003. To ensure that everything ran smoothly, he also ran his own tracker from a Linux box.

Fanimatrix

fanimatrix

The Fanimatrix turned out to be a great success. In the first week alone, 70,000 people grabbed a copy of the film. This is quite an achievement, especially when considering that BitTorrent wasn’t as widely known or easy to use back then.

With BitTorrent, the film crew easily saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in distribution costs. It was the perfect use case for how the technology could help independent creators.

Preserving Internet History

Today, there are plenty of free ‘instant streaming’ options available that make BitTorrent look silly. However, it is great to see that the Fanimatrix is still being shared after all these years. It’s part of Internet history now.

And with the fourth installment of The Matrix scheduled to premiere later this year, the project may gain some extra traction as well.

TorrentFreak spoke to Frost this week who doubled down on his earlier promise to keep the Fanimatrix site and the torrent running for as long as possible. He’s even taken some precautions, in case of an early departure from this world.

The original Fanimatrix site went offline for a while, but Frost restored it years ago and plans to keep it online for as long as possible. The crew is also considering a special celebration in two years, when the two-decade mark is passed.

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

As COVID cases rise, so do hospital-related infections

Overcrowding from COVID care is allowing infections to rise again.

As COVID cases rise, so do hospital-related infections

Enlarge (credit: Francine Orr | Getty Images)

Last month, a 46-year-old military veteran in Houston died of pancreatitis, an urgent but treatable condition, while waiting to be admitted to a hospital overwhelmed with unvaccinated COVID patients. Last week, the governor of Hawaii signed an executive order releasing the state’s hospitals from liability if they turn away sick patients because they have no room. On Monday, the Idaho state health department declared “crisis standards of care,” a triage system that allows hospitals with no spare beds to decide which patients they will accept.

Simultaneously, a Florida high school teacher went viral after describing how he took his 12-year-old to an emergency room that turned out to be overwhelmed with COVIOD patients. They waited six hours while his child’s appendix ruptured, a potentially life-threatening event. His son survived—after what the dad described as five days in the hospital and an initial $5,000 bill.

Stories of patients unable to get into hospitals—stuck in waiting rooms, lingering in ambulances, life-flighted to other states where there might be an open bed—have been an awful constant during this hot-spot summer. Overcrowding is an obvious threat to their health. But it poses a more subtle threat to already-admitted patients: it creates conditions and demands on hospital staff that allow dangerous infections to spread.

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Warum wir einen EU-Wiederaufbaufonds brauchen

Und weshalb das Bundesverfassungsgericht die EU-Kommission außer Acht lassen und sich auf den Schutz des Grundgesetzes konzentrieren kann

Und weshalb das Bundesverfassungsgericht die EU-Kommission außer Acht lassen und sich auf den Schutz des Grundgesetzes konzentrieren kann