DNA shows Pompeii’s dead aren’t who we thought they were

Integrating genetic data with historic and archaeological data can enrich or correct popular narratives.

People have long been fascinated by the haunting plaster casts of the bodies of people who died in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. Archaeologists have presented certain popular narratives about who these people might have been and how they might have been related. But ancient DNA analysis has revealed that those preferred narratives were not entirely accurate and may reflect certain cultural biases, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. The results also corroborate prior research suggesting that the people of ancient Pompeii were the descendants of immigrants from the Eastern Mediterranean.

As previously reported, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius released thermal energy roughly equivalent to 100,000 times the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, spewing molten rock, pumice, and hot ash over the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in particular. The vast majority of people in Pompeii and Herculaneum—the cities hardest hit—perished from asphyxiation, choking on the thick clouds of noxious gas and ash. But at least some of the Vesuvian victims probably died instantaneously from the intense heat of fast-moving lava flows, with temperatures high enough to boil brains and explode skulls.

In the first phase, immediately after the eruption, a long column of ash and pumice blanketed the surrounding towns, most notably Pompeii and Herculaneum. By late night or early morning, pyroclastic flows (fast-moving hot ash, lava fragments, and gases) swept through and obliterated what remained, leaving the bodies of the victims frozen in seeming suspended action.

Read full article

Comments

Update for Windows PCs with ARM chips could improve compatibility with x86 games and applications

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processors are the fastest ARM-based chips available for Windows laptops to date, making PCs with ARM chips competitive with their Intel and AMD-powered counterparts for the first time. But hardware is only part of the puz…

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processors are the fastest ARM-based chips available for Windows laptops to date, making PCs with ARM chips competitive with their Intel and AMD-powered counterparts for the first time. But hardware is only part of the puzzle. Most PC applications are designed for systems with x86 processors. So Microsoft developed an emulator called […]

The post Update for Windows PCs with ARM chips could improve compatibility with x86 games and applications appeared first on Liliputing.

Meta beats suit over tool that lets Facebook users unfollow everything

The tool will likely be released anyway, testing Meta’s litigiousness.

Meta has defeated a lawsuit—for now—that attempted to invoke Section 230 protections for a third-party tool that would have made it easy for Facebook users to toggle on and off their news feeds as they pleased.

The lawsuit was filed by Ethan Zuckerman, a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He feared that Meta might sue to block his tool, Unfollow Everything 2.0, because Meta threatened to sue to block the original tool when it was released by another developer. In May, Zuckerman told Ars that he was "suing Facebook to make it better" and planned to use Section 230's shield to do it.

Zuckerman's novel legal theory argued that Congress always intended for Section 230 to protect third-party tools designed to empower users to take control over potentially toxic online environments. In his complaint, Zuckerman tried to convince a US district court in California that:

Read full article

Comments

The voice of America Online’s “You’ve got mail” has died at age 74

His cassette recording, made for $200 in 1989, was a sound that defined an online generation.

On Tuesday, Elwood Edwards, the voice behind the online service America Online's iconic "You've got mail" greeting, died at age 74, one day before his 75th birthday, according to Cleveland's WKYC Studios, where he worked for many years. The greeting became a cultural touchstone in the 1990s and early 2000s in the early Internet era; it was heard by hundreds of millions of users when they logged in to the service and new email was waiting for them.

The story of Edwards' famous recording began in 1989 when Steve Case, CEO of Quantum Computer Services (which later became America Online—or AOL for short), wanted to add a human voice to the company's Quantum Link online service. Karen Edwards, who worked as a customer service representative, heard Case discussing the plan and suggested her husband Elwood, a professional broadcaster.

Edwards recorded the famous phrase (and several others) into a cassette recorder in his living room in 1989 and was paid $200 for the service. His voice recordings of "Welcome," "You've got mail," "File's done," and "Goodbye" went on to reach millions of users during AOL's rise to dominance in the 1990s online landscape.

Read full article

Comments

Pirating “The Pirate Bay” TV Series is Ironically Difficult

The Pirate Bay made its debut as a TV series on the Swedish streaming platform SVT Play earlier today. International viewers are left waiting until other services pick it up. In the meantime, some may be tempted to explore unofficial channels for pirated copies of the show. But finding a pirated copy is proving surprisingly difficult.

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

tpb seriesThe inception and early years of The Pirate Bay are an intriguing chapter of the Internet’s history.

Founded by the Piratbyrån group, The Pirate Bay and its founders embraced the power of the new BitTorrent technology: to copy culture en masse.

By doing so, they altered the public discourse, openly taunting the entertainment industries in the process.

This chapter didn’t end as planned for the lead characters; Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), Peter Sunde (Brokep), and Gotffrid Svartholm (Anakata), who were eventually sentenced to prison. By then, however, they had sparked a digital and political revolution, the impact of which is still felt today.

TV Series

The Pirate Bay didn’t just trigger a file-sharing bonanza, it was exemplary for the rapid rise of the web. New technology empowered people whose lives were traditionally dictated by mainstream entertainment and publishing companies.

The web created new forms to share news, opinions, knowledge, and media. And few Swedes with keyboards had the power to upset billion-dollar companies.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that this is a good story, perhaps even a movie script? This includes the people at the Swedish production company B-Reel Films, who got the green light to turn it into a TV series a few years ago.

The series premiered at the on-demand platform of the Swedish national broadcaster SVT a few hours ago. International deals haven’t been announced, but pirates can generally get access anyway.

Pirating ‘The Pirate Bay’ Series

Soon after the first two episodes of The Pirate Bay series came out, scene release copies started circulating online. As one would expect.

The Scene group OLLONBORRE, which specializes in Swedish content, was the first to pick the show up. Within minutes, the first 1080p WEB-rips were posted on private scene servers and 720p copies followed a few hours later.

tpb-leak

Interestingly, pirate releases have yet to make their way to The Pirate Bay. We haven’t seen any other copies on other public pirate sites either, which is surprising given the topic of the series.

It’s common knowledge that The Scene – a secretive network of release groups – prefers to keep its releases private. Therefore, it wasn’t happy with The Pirate Bay’s public nature and rise to prominence in the early 2003s, which is highlighted in the first episodes of the TV series.

However, we expected non-scene release groups would be eager to pick up the show. Apparently that’s not the case, yet.

Fact-Based Fiction

While the broader international audience must wait for the official release, we can add a disclaimer for viewers. While entertaining and engaging, the series should not be taken as fact.

The script is loosely based on The Pirate Bay story and many of the scenes are fiction. New elements were added, timelines have been changed, and the characters are constructed by the show’s writers, which is not necessarily how they came across in real life.

The Pirate Bay’s founders didn’t participate in the production, which means that the creators had no other option than to fill in some blanks.

In an interview with Drama Quarterly, director Jens Sjögren previously acknowledged that they had to mix facts and fiction to tell the story. He understands that some people won’t like that.

“People are going to say a lot of shit about it. ‘It was not exactly like this, blah, blah, blah.’ No, but we really broke our fucking backs to try to just embrace the feeling of really struggling with something you believe in so hard – so much so you would almost be ready to go to prison for it,” Sjögren said.

It wasn’t the creators’ main goal to create a literal replay of what happened. Instead, Sjögren said that he tried to capture the spirit of The Pirate Bay founders’ ambitions and goals.

Whether this succeeded is up to the viewer, but the series definitely shows the contrasting personalities of Fredrik, Gottfrid, and Peter. They were all in it for different reasons, which may be part of their initial success.

This weekend we will publish a follow-up article, sharing some thoughts on the series with input from Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde and Piratbyrån co-founder Rasmus Fleischer.

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

Raumfahrt: Roskosmos stellt russischen Satellitenrekord auf

Die Russische Föderation hat so viele Satelliten auf einmal ins Weltall gebracht wie noch nie zuvor. Jedoch kommt das nicht an den Rekord von SpaceX aus dem Jahr 2021 heran. (Roskosmos, Raumfahrt)

Die Russische Föderation hat so viele Satelliten auf einmal ins Weltall gebracht wie noch nie zuvor. Jedoch kommt das nicht an den Rekord von SpaceX aus dem Jahr 2021 heran. (Roskosmos, Raumfahrt)