Month: October 2024

Between 1400 and 1775, a significant upsurge of witch trials swept across early-modern Europe, resulting in the execution of an estimated 40,000–60,000 accused witches. Historians and social scientists have long studied this period in hopes of learning more about how large-scale social changes occur. Some have pointed to the invention of the printing press and the publication of witch-hunting manuals—most notably the highly influential Malleus maleficarum—as a major factor, making it easier for the witch-hunting hysteria to spread across the continent.

The abrupt emergence of the craze and its rapid spread, resulting in a pronounced shift in social behaviors—namely, the often brutal persecution of suspected witches—is consistent with a theory of social change dubbed "ideational diffusion," according to a new paper published in the journal Theory and Society. There is the introduction of new ideas, reinforced by social networks, that eventually take root and lead to widespread behavioral changes in a society.

The authors had already been thinking about cultural change and the driving forces by which it occurs, including social contagion—especially large cultural shifts like the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, for example. One co-author, Steve Pfaff, a sociologist at Chapman University, was working on a project about witch trials in Scotland and was particularly interested in the role the Malleus maleficarum might have played.

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Measles, whopping cough, polio, tetanus—devastating and sometimes deadly diseases await comebacks in the US as more and more parents are declining routine childhood vaccines that have proved safe and effective.

The vaccination rates among kindergartners have fallen once again, dipping into the range of 92 percent in the 2023–2024 school year, down from about 93 percent the previous school year and 95 percent in 2019–2020. That's according to an analysis of the latest vaccination data published today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The analysis also found that vaccination exemptions rose to an all-time high of 3.3 percent, up from 3 percent in the previous school year. The rise in exemptions is nearly entirely driven by non-medical exemptions—in other words, religious or philosophical exemptions. Only 0.2 percent of all vaccination exemptions are medically justified.

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US officials charged a man with compromising the official Twitter/X account of the Securities and Exchange Commission for purposes of posting false information that caused the price of bitcoin to spike.

The January attack, federal prosecutors said, started with a SIM swap, a form of fraud that takes control of a cell phone number by assuming the identity of the person the number belongs to. The attacker then uses the false identity to induce an employee of the cellular carrier to move the phone number off the current Subscriber Identity Module card, a small chip that connects a device to a specific carrier account. Then, the attacker has the number transferred to a new SIM card, usually under the pretense that the fraudulent account holder has just obtained a new device.

Not the SEC announcement you think it is

The number at issue in the SIM swap, an indictment unsealed on Thursday said, was used to provide two-factor authentication for the SEC X account, which authorized commission personnel to post official communications. One of the people connected to the conspiracy then used the 2FA code to compromise the X account to tweet false information that caused the price of a single bitcoin to increase by $1,000.

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The Yuzuki Avaota-A1 is a single-board PC that stands out for a few reasons. One is that it’s based on an entirely open source design – the board is now available for purchase for $55, but it was first introduced earlier this year, and you can find schematics and documentation at the Avaota website. Another unusual […]

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Don't book your tickets for the launch of NASA's Artemis II mission next year just yet.

We have had reason to doubt the official September 2025 launch date for the mission, the first crewed flight into deep space in more than five decades, for a while now. This is principally because NASA is continuing to mull the implications of damage to the Orion spacecraft's heat shield from the Artemis I mission nearly two years ago.

However, it turns out that there are now other problems with holding to this date as well.

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The Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows is a mini PC with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-001DE) processor that went up for pre-order this summer for $899. Now, just a few months later, Qualcomm has pulled the plug on the little computer. According to Jeff Geerling and xda-developers, customers who ordered one from Arrow Electronics are […]

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TorrentGalaxy has had its fair share of issues over the past few months.

Update December 9: The troubles continue for TorrentGalaxy. After a few days with technical issues, the site is currently unreachable. Perhaps more updates or maintenance? No further information is known but the site’s owners have not informed the staff.

In June, many users feared that the site had thrown in the towel, displaying only a cryptic message that read “4ever?” to visitors. This came as a surprise, even to the site’s top staffers, who had no clue what was going on.

The site eventually returned as if nothing ever happened and resumed its operations. The purpose of the downtime was never clarified and most people forgot about it until the site went offline again in September with another cryptic message.

With the rumor mill in full swing, claims from ‘moderators’ about the site’s demise started to circulate. However, those turned out to be unfounded as the site made yet another comeback after a few days.

Meanwhile, users began noticing occasional technical issues with the site, including periods of downtime such as today. Visitors to the site currently see the following message: (site’s back on October 18)

“Site is temporarily unavailable due to automated maintenance or some mook spilling coffee in the wrong places.”

TorrentGalaxy Down

These recurring issues are unusual for TorrentGalaxy which never suffered from long stints of downtime in previous years. So, why is this happening now?

‘New Owners’

After speaking to several sources, we can now offer some broader context. Apparently, the site has changed owners recently. The initial ‘maintenance’ was presumably part of this handover and could also play a role in other recent issues.

TorrentFreak spoke to one of the TorrentGalaxy’s original founders, who confirmed the change of ownership. We tried to get in touch with the new operators to hear their side of the story, but they haven’t replied.

Takeovers of pirate sites are not uncommon, but given TorrentGalaxy’s community-driven history, this is a noteworthy event.

Finding out more details about the takeover appears impossible, however. The co-founder we spoke to claims not to have been involved in selling the site and the person who was in charge of the sale can’t be reached.

How it All Began

While we don’t know where the site is heading under its new owners, the co-founder did provide some more background on how TorrentGalaxy got started. That, by itself, is a story worth sharing.

The co-founder prefers to remain anonymous, so here we refer to them using the fictitious nickname “Genesis”. For the record, what follows is the account of one person and should be interpreted as such.

The origin story takes us back to late 2017, when ExtraTorrent had just shut down. At the time, Genesis came up with the idea to start a new torrent site. A developer was approached to code it from scratch, but the end result wasn’t satisfactory, so that initial project stranded.

During this time, many former ExtraTorrent members stayed connected, often using the chatbox of another popular torrent site, 1337x. When Genesis shared their plans for a new torrent site there, “Cameron” (another pseudonym), also a former ExtraTorrent user, offered assistance.

Both founders brought something essential to the table. Cameron had plenty of coding experience and took care of all the technical aspects. Meanwhile, Genesis helped out with the finances until the site could sustain itself though advertisements.

Within months, an idea born in a chatbox became TorrentGalaxy, which quickly built a thriving community. In just a few years, ‘TGx’ grew into one of the largest torrent sites, serving millions of visitors each month.

It was already public knowledge that former ExtraTorrent members founded the site, but this backstory adds some more color. What began as a simple chatbox conversation, triggered a transformation worthy of ‘notorious pirate site status‘, and the associated legal pressure that comes with it.

The reason for the site’s sale remains unknown. We understand that Genesis and Cameron are no longer in contact. Perhaps they prefer to leave the past behind, regardless of TorrentGalaxy’s future.

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

European Union regulators warned Elon Musk's X platform that it may calculate fines by including revenue from Musk's other companies, including SpaceX, according to a Bloomberg article published today.

X was previously accused of violating the Digital Services Act (DSA), which could result in fines of up to 6 percent of total worldwide annual turnover. That fine would be levied on the "provider" of X, which could be defined to include other Musk-led firms.

Bloomberg writes that "regulators are considering whether sales from SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI and the Boring Company, in addition to revenue generated from the social network, should be included to determine potential fines against X, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because the information isn't public." Bloomberg's report says that Tesla "sales would be exempt from this calculation because it's publicly traded and not under Musk's full control."

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Android 15 started rolling out to Pixel devices Tuesday and will arrive, through various third-party efforts, on other Android devices at some point. There is always a bunch of little changes to discover in an Android release, whether by reading, poking around, or letting your phone show you 25 new things after it restarts.

In Android 15, some of the most notable involve making your device less appealing to snoops and thieves and more secure against the kids to whom you hand your phone to keep them quiet at dinner. There are also smart fixes for screen sharing, OTP codes, and cellular hacking prevention, but details about them are spread across Google's own docs and blogs and various news site's reports.

Here's what is notable and new in how Android 15 handles privacy and security.

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Chinese mini PC maker GMKtec has begun showing off its first model powered by an AMD Strix Point processor. The upcoming GMKtec EVO-X1 HX370 is a small desktop PC with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, LPDDR5x-7500 memory, and support for external graphics cards thanks to an OCuLink port with support for data […]

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