Month: November 2021

Playdate delays to 2022 amid scramble to revise the entire handheld console

“We can’t get any more of our current CPU for—you’re not going to believe this—730 days.”

The Playdate's shipping box, modified to reflect today's news.

Enlarge / The Playdate's shipping box, modified to reflect today's news.

The global chip shortage has put a serious pinch on upcoming portable gaming device production this week. Barely a day after Valve announced that its upcoming handheld PC would be delayed "two months," the quirky, indie-minded Playdate console, initially slated to arrive by the end of 2021, followed suit on Thursday.

In the case of this yellow, cranky Game Boy-like system, its producers at Panic have opted to divulge practically everything leading to its system being delayed into "early 2022"—and orders beyond the first 20,000 getting pushed back further.

In a lengthy newsletter sent to Playdate preorder customers, Panic began by detailing a confusing hardware issue that its team found in its first batch of 5,000 completed systems, all seemingly ready to ship to customers by the end of 2021: a busted battery. "We found a number of units with batteries so drained, Playdate wouldn’t power on at all—and couldn’t be charged," Panic writes.

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MPA/ACE Attempt to Hunt Down Pirate Site Operators via US Court

The Motion Picture Association has filed a flurry of DMCA subpoena applications at a California court. The aim is to compel Tonic Domains and CDN provider Cloudflare to hand over all information they hold relating to dozens of pirate site operators. These include major torrent site RARBG, the popular Oha addon for the Watched app, streaming portal Primewire, and a pair of IPTV sellers

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

mpaWhen launching an investigation into a pirate site there are many publicly available sources that can be trawled for information.

No matter how detailed the findings, however, nothing beats knowing the name and address of a pirate site operator. With this information to hand a number of options become available, from straightforward legal threats to full-blown lawsuits. As a result, most site operators closely guard their identities but others can make crucial mistakes or leave useful crumbs behind.

These trails can sometimes be found at third-party service providers. Domain registries can be useful since domain owners are required to give up their real names, at least in theory anyway. Platforms such as Cloudflare may also carry useful intelligence and a recent case involving pirate index Mangabank shows that the company does indeed hold a lot of information about its customers.

MPA/ACE Seeks Info From TONIC

The Motion Picture Association and anti-piracy partner Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment are no strangers to gathering information in this manner. After many similar requests in recent years, this week they were back in a California court seeking to compel domain registry TONIC to give up the identities of many of its customers.

One of the most visible targets in the first request is long-standing torrent giant rarbg.to, one of the most resilient (and reliable) pirate sites online today. According to SimilarWeb stats the site enjoys more than 60 million visits per month and as a result the MPA wants the TONIC registry to hand over the details of its owner.

Another big target is moviesjoy.to, a streaming site with around 20 million visits per month. Next in popularity (in traffic terms) is freefilm.to, an 8.5 million visitor film streaming platform that is very popular in the Czech Republic. The same can be said for TV streaming platform freeserial.to, where Czech visitors make up the majority of its 3 million visits every month.

Showing the global reach of the MPA/ACE, they are also seeking the identity of the owner of kisstvshow.to, a 6.3 million visit per month TV show site that is popular in Indonesia and the Philippines. The list is completed with requests to unmask those behind several other streaming sites including yesmovies.to, nox.to and kinomax.to (both popular in Germany) and ymovies.to, which is popular in the US, UK and Canada.

The second DMCA subpoena targeting TONIC references a single domain – watchhd.to. This IPTV supplier has been in operation for a number of years with many using its dedicated Kodi addon to access the service. It carries a wide variety of content with a focus on sport but also has a VOD service that reportedly carries more than 4,000 movies and TV shows.

The final subpoena again lists just one domain – oha.to – which isn’t a pirate site, at least in the traditional sense.

To appreciate the importance of this domain one has to look towards the popular ‘Watched’ streaming app that at one point entered the top 30 most popular entertainment apps on Apple’s App Store. Watched is also available on various other operating systems but needs a ‘bundle’ to be installed to make it a functional pirate tool, which is where Oha! (available at oha.to) comes in.

Earlier this year, MPA/ACE went to court in the United States to have Cloudflare hand over information about the owner of oha.to. Whether that was useful or not is unknown but they are now pressing TONIC for information about the domain owner. Hollywood clearly wants this operation shut down.

Whether this trio of subpoenas will bear any fruit will remain to be seen but TONIC is already under scrutiny in the US after being called out by the MPA as a “notorious market” in a submission to the USTR. It’s a characterization the registry fiercely rejects but the diplomatic pressure may yet prove to be a factor.

MPA/ACE Seeks Info From Cloudflare

The final pair of DMCA subpoenas target Cloudflare and more than two dozen of its customers. Several of these (freefilm.to, freeserial.to, nox.to, kisstvshow.to) appear in the subpoenas to TONIC but there are many others too.

They include major streaming site primewire.ag (20 million visits), Chinese streaming site ifsp.tv (15.7m), and Italy-focused supervideo.tv (3.6m).

Also included is egy.best. In 2019 the site announced its shutdown but it is now back up and pulling in more than 15 million visits per month, mostly from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco. The site was also called out recently by the MPA in its ‘notorious markets’ submission to the USTR.

The rest of the domains in the third MPA/ACE subpoena against Cloudflare are as follows: obniv.com, hd-world.cc, pelis-online.net, 7movierulz.vc, extramovies.camp, sendfox.org, ogladaj.to, 94itv.app, imybinoo.net, extrabb.com, wavob.com, vagdi.com, bovmi.com, kissasian.sh, phimmoizz.net, unblockit.app and vod.phimmoicdn.net

The final application against Cloudflare targets a pair of pirate IPTV sellers/suppliers. They are named as iptvsubscription.tv and webestreams.com. The documentation lists ‘backend’ URLs which suggests the MPA/ACE is interested in their VOD offerings.

Copies of all five DMCA subpoena applications can be found here (1,2,3,4,5 pdf)

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

Daily Deals (11-11-2021)

It’s Singles Day (11/11), a made-up sales holiday that started in China, and that means a number of Chinese shops and marketplaces including AliExpress, Banggood, DHGate, and GeekBuying are running Singles Day sales. You may have to hunt a bit for true bargains, since there are coupons and flash sales to navigate, and some items […]

The post Daily Deals (11-11-2021) appeared first on Liliputing.

It’s Singles Day (11/11), a made-up sales holiday that started in China, and that means a number of Chinese shops and marketplaces including AliExpress, Banggood, DHGate, and GeekBuying are running Singles Day sales.

You may have to hunt a bit for true bargains, since there are coupons and flash sales to navigate, and some items are marked up before they’re discounted. But I’ve added some of the better deals I can find to today’s roundup of daily tech bargains.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something for cheap gear that ships from the US, Walmart is running an early Black Friday sale with discounts on the retailer’s Onn tablets, among other things.

Here are some of the day’s best deals.

Tablets

Handhelds

Laptops

Mini PCs

Smartphones

Downloads & Streaming

Wearables

Wireless audio

The post Daily Deals (11-11-2021) appeared first on Liliputing.

New observations suggest our Arctic buildings might be in trouble

Researchers have a more accurate way to look at how we’re developing the Arctic.

Image of factory like buildings in a snow-covered landscape.

Enlarge / A mining operation inside the Arctic Circle. (credit: BeyondImages / Getty Images)

As the world warms, countries with holdings in the Arctic are increasingly eyeing the region for development and use. As Ars reported last July, the frigid polar zone might be open to increased shipping, as it remains free of ice longer under climate change.

However, policymakers and scientists need better tools to understand the extent to which humans are using the Arctic and what the future holds for the roads, settlements, and other developments in the region. New research claims to provide a more accurate way to look at how human use is changing the Arctic.

According to Annett Bartsch, lead author of the paper, there are currently no good sources of data for risk assessments and vulnerability studies for the infrastructure in the Arctic. She said that OpenStreetMap is “incomplete and inconsistent” in the Arctic and that previous research using it just accepted its limitations.

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Discord CEO backs away from hinted NFT integration after backlash

Many users react harshly to what some see as a coming crypto-fueled revolution.

Discord CEO backs away from hinted NFT integration after backlash

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Discord's CEO is publicly backing away from hints that the gaming-focused social networking company was seeking to integrate non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrency wallets into the platform directly.

The news comes after Jason Citron, who founded and leads the company, tweeted a mockup on Monday of a Discord interface showing integration with crypto products like MetaMask, WalletConnect, and Ethereum in the Discord app (alongside currently integrated services like YouTube, Twitch, etc.). That post led to serious pushback from some Discord users and watchers, leading Citron to send out a tweet backing away from the concept late Wednesday.

"Thanks for all the perspectives everyone," Citron wrote. "We have no current plans to ship this internal concept. For now, we're focused on protecting users from spam, scams, and fraud. Web3 has lots of good but also lots of problems we need to work through at our scale. More soon."

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Express your inner Legolas with these Lord of the Rings keycaps

New PBT keycaps from Drop bring Middle-Earth languages to your fingertips.

close up of drop elvish keycaps

Enlarge / Drop's Elvish Lord of the Rings keycap set. (credit: Drop)

Have you ever wanted to speak like the elf Legolas or the dwarf Gimli? With the latest keycaps from keyboard enthusiast shop and vendor Drop, communicating through The Lord of the Rings' Elvish or Dwarvish languages is just a mechanical key press away.

The Elvish modifiers use the same language found in the One Ring.

The Elvish modifiers use the same language found in the One Ring. (credit: Drop)

The Drop + The Lord of the Rings MT3 Elvish Keycap Set and Drop + The Lord of the Rings MT3 Dwarvish Keycap Set announced Wednesday are PBT plastic keycaps that fit on any mechanical keyboard switch with Cherry MX-style stems. The kits come in Elvish or Dwarvish for those already familiar with the languages (or those who can touch-type). Anyone who isn't so multi-lingual may want to opt for the kits that include English letters in smaller print next to the J.R.R. Tolkien-language characters.

Drop's Dwarvish <em>Lord of the Rings</em> keycap set.

Drop's Dwarvish Lord of the Rings keycap set. (credit: Drop)

Drop used dye-sublimation for the legends, which means the inscriptions are permanently stained on and won't fade. The characters on the keycaps are also accurate, meaning you could use them to teach yourself the fictional languages. And as noted by Matteo "Matt3o" Spinelli, who created the keycaps, you could further your studies by downloading Elvish and Dwarvish fonts.

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Holmes’ ex-boyfriend, who was Theranos exec, bullied and ignored $1.2M investor

Jury hears more Theranos missteps from frustrated investor, former lab director.

Holmes’ ex-boyfriend, who was Theranos exec, bullied and ignored $1.2M investor

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In 2006, Alan Eisenman invested more than $1 million in Theranos, a then-promising medical diagnostic company founded by college dropout Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes had told him that her company was talking with Morgan Stanley about an IPO in 12–18 months and that the company would bring in $200 million in revenue by 2008. 

For years, Eisenman and Holmes were in frequent communication, including quarterly calls with other investors and one-on-one conversations. He was impressed that the company had contracts with a number of pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Novartis, and believed in its mission.

Eisenman is a retired financial planner from Texas, and he took the stand yesterday in Holmes’ criminal trial. Holmes is being charged with ten counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Eisenman’s investment is one of the counts of wire fraud. For him, Theranos’ shine tarnished in 2010 when communications from Holmes and Theranos “dropped to zero,” Eisenman said.

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Can we use big batteries to power our trains?

A new analysis suggests the economics are close to breaking even.

An eastbound manifest freight swoops through an S curve in Lombard Canyon, just east of Toston, Montana, on September 11, 2011. The tracks here snake along the Missouri River between Toston and Lombard.

Enlarge / An eastbound manifest freight swoops through an S curve in Lombard Canyon, just east of Toston, Montana, on September 11, 2011. The tracks here snake along the Missouri River between Toston and Lombard. (credit: Mike Danneman / Getty Images)

With the rapid pace of development in electric vehicles, we will likely get to a place where eliminating carbon emissions from one form of transport is possible. But cleaning up the remaining major modes—planes, trains, and ships—appears to be considerably more challenging. A new analysis suggests we have a good idea of how to improve one of those.

The study, performed by California-based researchers, looks at the possibility of electrifying rail-based freight. It finds that the technology is pretty much ready, and under the right circumstances, the economics are on the verge of working out. Plus, putting giant batteries on freight cars has the potential to create some interesting side benefits.

Giving freight a jolt

Right now, most freight in the US is moved by diesel-powered locomotives. In a typical year, these locomotives produce about 35 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, and the rest of the pollutants they make are estimated to cause 1,000 premature deaths and $6.5 billion in health damages.

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