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Ein Eiserner Vorhang, eine Mauer – der Westen erwärmt sich für Neuerungen an der Grenze zum Osten und anderswo. Verantwortung tragen sollen aber die “Autokraten” der Transitländer
Auf Basis der Unreal Engine werden drei Linien der Münchner Straßenbahn nachgebaut. Golem.de konnte Tram Sim Munich vorab anschauen. (Simulationsspiel, Games)
Auf Basis der Unreal Engine werden drei Linien der Münchner Straßenbahn nachgebaut. Golem.de konnte Tram Sim Munich vorab anschauen. (Simulationsspiel, Games) Last week, leaked copies of Dune appeared on pirate sites before the U.S. theatrical and HBO premieres. This is typically a recipe for a piracy surge. While there was indeed plenty of interest in pirated Dune copies, the biggest spike came after HBO leaks appeared days later. The unusual second wave was likely triggered by quality, PR, or perhaps a bit of both.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
After a long wait, the 2021 installment of the sci-fi classic Dune finally premiered in the United States last week.
The film had already come out in other parts of the world a month earlier, which caused quite a bit of frustration among eager fans.
Their patience was further tested when a relatively high-quality copy of the film leaked on pirate sites days before the premiere on HBO Max and in theaters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, millions of people decided to download or stream these illegal copies.
These pre-release leaks are seen as one of the worst threats in Hollywood and one would expect a massive piracy spike from the get-go. However, when we analyzed a large sample(*) of the download numbers through BitTorrent, we noticed an interesting pattern.
The chart below starts on Monday 17th October, the first full day the film was available. On that day, there were hundreds of thousands of downloads, which easily made Dune the most downloaded film that day.
Dune retained this ‘most pirated’ title on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, despite a sharp drop in absolute downloads. When we look at the ‘market share’ of Dune downloads we notice a similar decrease. On Monday, Dune was good for 5.16% of all BitTorrent downloads and this percentage dropped to 2.10% on Thursday.
What is most interesting, perhaps, is that interest started picking up again after Dune was released on HBO Max. Soon after the official streaming release, HBO Max rips appeared online in reportedly better quality than the early pirated copies.
Whether the broader public is aware of this quality difference is up for debate. All releases were tagged as ‘Web Rips’ so the video quality is not obvious based on the title and tags. Nonetheless, the downloads spiked.
The second peak in Dune downloads started on Friday and the Saturday and Sunday numbers were also higher than Monday’s when the first release appeared. This isn’t a typical pattern for new film releases but there are a few factors at play that could explain it.
As mentioned before, the HBO Max release was higher quality, which may have been worth the wait for some pirates. That said, the quality difference wasn’t obvious, and we expect that those who are particularly concerned about quality would probably want to see it in the theater anyway.
The PR angle is another option. Not every pirate is a news junkie so it’s definitely possible that many people didn’t bother to search when the film wasn’t yet out. Also, movie premieres tend to come with a lot of advertising, which may have increased demand as well.
There is another timing factor that can play a role. BitTorrent traffic tends to go up during the weekend, which coincides with the HBO Max release of Dune. This will have likely boosted the downloads somewhat, but even in relative terms Friday (5.30%) and Saturday (5.32%) topped the Monday percentage.
Also, when we look at the release of The Suicide Squad on HBO Max in early August we see a steady decline during the first 9 days, where downloads during the second weekend were lower than on Thursday.
The above is just a simple case study that’s certainly not representative of every future movie release. We’re not trying to make a huge point here, but it’s fascinating to see these types of patterns in the wild.
The safe conclusion is that quality, timing, and PR all contributed to the second peak in Dune downloads. If we have to bet, however, our money would be on PR as the main contributor. While some pirates may view themselves as vigilantes, they’re certainly not immune to outside infuence.
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* The data used in the graphs above is taken from a large but non-exhaustive sample of estimated worldwide downloads. The information is gathered from the public DHT network, as reported by the data provider Iknow. BitTorrent piracy is only a fraction of the total piracy landscape.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Disclosure: Some links on this page are monetized by the Skimlinks, Amazon, Rakuten Advertising, and eBay, affiliate programs. Amazon’s entry-level Kindle is on sale for $50 today, which is the lowest price to date for Amazon’s eReader with a front-lit E Ink display. And the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K is on sale for […]
The post Lilbits: Google’s 2nd-gen Tensor chip, PinePhone Keyboard, and Amazon Kindle for $50 appeared first on Liliputing.
Disclosure: Some links on this page are monetized by the Skimlinks, Amazon, Rakuten Advertising, and eBay, affiliate programs.
Amazon’s entry-level Kindle is on sale for $50 today, which is the lowest price to date for Amazon’s eReader with a front-lit E Ink display. And the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K is on sale for $25, which is half the usual price. Amazon is running deals on dozens of products today, and those are just the tip of the iceberg.
In other recent tech news from around the web, Google is already working on the follow-up to the Tensor chip that powers the Pixel 6 smartphone, Roku has launched an Independent Developer Kit for folks who want to hack together personal-use applications for the company’s media streamers, and the official PinePhone Keyboard accessory goes on sale in November.
Amazon’s current device deals include a $50 Kindle, $25 Fire TV Stick 4K, Echo Show devices for $55 and up, and eero mesh WiFi routers for up to 30% off.
Google is, unsurprisingly, already working on a 2nd-gen Tensor processor for the Pixel 7 phone, which will presumably launch in the fall of 2022. No word on features or performance, but references to a GS201 chip and “Cloudripper” board are popping up.
The keyboard essentially turns the Linux-friendly smartphone into a tiny Linux-friendly laptop. It’s been in development for months and will finally be available for purchase soon for $50.
A crowdfunding campaign is set to launch soon for this mini-laptop with an 8 inch touchscreen display, 180 degree swivel-hinge, pen support, and modular ports. GPD has now revealed pricing. Models with a Pentium Silver N6000 processor will start at $650, while a Core i7-1195G7 model with Thunderbolt 4 will start at $999. Expect up to a 30% discount during crowdfunding.
GPD Pocket3 price list:
1.Pocket 3 1195G7: $999
2.Pocket 3 1195G7 + module: $1079
3.Pocket 3 N6000: $650
4.Pocket 3 N6000 + module: $730
Remark:
DHL cost contained
All IGG backers will get a 4096 stylus as gifthttps://t.co/zEMaOUJfIX— GPD Game Consoles (@softwincn) October 29, 2021
Roku is launching an Independent Developer Kit (IDK) that lets users create tools for personal use including games, news aggregator apps, smart home tools, or other IoT stuff. Requires Roku OS 10.5 or higher and a recent streaming player (no Roku TVs).
Keep up on the latest headlines by following Liliputing on Twitter and Facebook and follow @LinuxSmartphone on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news on open source mobile phones.
The post Lilbits: Google’s 2nd-gen Tensor chip, PinePhone Keyboard, and Amazon Kindle for $50 appeared first on Liliputing.
Strebt Facebook mit dem Metaverse mal wieder eine Monopolstellung an? Das geht zumindest aus einem früheren Firmenmemo hervor. (Meta, Soziales Netz)
Strebt Facebook mit dem Metaverse mal wieder eine Monopolstellung an? Das geht zumindest aus einem früheren Firmenmemo hervor. (Meta, Soziales Netz) Klimaziele lassen sich kaum erreichen, ohne Kohlendioxid wieder aus der Luft zu holen. Die bisher verfügbaren Technologien dafür sind aber teuer, umstritten und ökologisch bedenklich
A readable book on a depressing subject: the ongoing challenge of plastic pollution.
Enlarge (credit: Makiko Tanigawa / Getty Images)
Island Press is “the nation’s leading publisher on environmental issues.” In its latest release, Thicker than Water, Erica Cirino, a photojournalist and licensed wildlife rehabilitator, explores what becomes of plastic—all 8 billion or so tons of it that humans have manufactured in the last seventy-ish years.
Plastic’s greatest strength is also its greatest flaw: It takes eons to break down. It breaks apart, into smaller and smaller micro- and nano-sized particles. But unlike natural materials like wood and glass, plastic doesn't break down into its constituent chemicals. Those micro- and nano-sized particles are still plastic. According to Alice Zhu, a graduate student studying plastics at the University of Toronto, this is because the carbon-carbon bonds that form the backbone of most plastic polymers require an immense amount of energy to break apart. And because these bonds are in synthetic arrangements, there are no microorganisms that can break most of them down (yet).
There is a marked disconnect between how long plastic sticks around and how long we get utility from it. Many single-use items, like straws and cutlery, are used for only minutes; thin plastic bags, like those needlessly wrapped around produce and almost everything we order online (and even plastic cutlery), are immediately thrown away. This thin plastic is made of low density polyethylene, which is the most difficult kind to recycle and emits more climate-warming methane and ethylene when exposed to sunlight than other, harder types of plastic. It is also one of the most commonly produced.
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Experten halten das 1,5-Grad-Ziel beim Klimaschutz für nicht verhandelbar. Deutschland droht eine Erwärmung um 4,6 Grad bis 2100. (Klimakrise, GreenIT)
Experten halten das 1,5-Grad-Ziel beim Klimaschutz für nicht verhandelbar. Deutschland droht eine Erwärmung um 4,6 Grad bis 2100. (Klimakrise, GreenIT) The Babylonian tablet may have come from an ancient exorcist’s library.
(credit: Photograph: The British Museum)
A curator exploring the shadowy recesses of the British Museum’s archives recently encountered a ghost—or rather, the world’s oldest image of one, etched onto a 3,500-year-old Babylonian clay tablet. The figure of a tall, emaciated spirit with his hands bound illustrates the text of an ancient exorcism ritual meant to banish the sort of ghost that “seizes hold of a person and pursues him and cannot be loosed.”
Irving Finkel, the curator of the British Museum’s Middle Eastern department and a specialist in cuneiform, the angular writing system of the ancient Babylonian civilization, recently translated the text of the ritual, which had remained unread and ignored since the British Museum acquired the tablet in the 1800s. At that time, museums across Europe were in a rush to stockpile Babylonian artifacts, and curators would often pay local people to loot clay and stone tablets, along with other artifacts, from archaeological sites in what is now Iraq. Most of those items arrived with little or no information about their context and ended up in storage.
The ghost tablet, for example, had never been displayed to the public, and no one had translated its text. Nor had anyone noticed the hidden ghostly image on the reverse side of the clay tablet, either. That side appears blank until it’s viewed under a light at just the right angle, when the image of the ghost seems to leap out at the viewer.
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The results and analysis for DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray sales for the week ending October 16, 2021, are in. 20th Century’s interesting take on MMOs is the best-seller for the week. Find out what movie it was in our weekly DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray sales stats and analysis feature.
The results and analysis for DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray sales for the week ending October 16, 2021, are in. 20th Century's interesting take on MMOs is the best-seller for the week. Find out what movie it was in our weekly DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray sales stats and analysis feature.
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