Month: November 2024

The 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.

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.

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)

Wer kein Amazon-Konto besitzt, kann neuerdings auf weniger Informationen im Onlinekaufhaus zugreifen. (Amazon, Onlineshop)

Ask a few random people about Apple Intelligence and you’ll probably get quite different responses.

One might be excited about the new features. Another could opine that no one asked for this and the company is throwing away its reputation with creatives and artists to chase a fad. Another still might tell you that regardless of the potential value, Apple is simply too late to the game to make a mark.

The release of Apple’s first Apple Intelligence-branded AI tools in iOS 18.1 last week makes all those perspectives understandable.

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Ask a few random people about Apple Intelligence and you’ll probably get quite different responses.

One might be excited about the new features. Another could opine that no one asked for this and the company is throwing away its reputation with creatives and artists to chase a fad. Another still might tell you that regardless of the potential value, Apple is simply too late to the game to make a mark.

The release of Apple’s first Apple Intelligence-branded AI tools in iOS 18.1 last week makes all those perspectives understandable.

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Das Fahrradleuchten-Set sorgt mit LEDs und Bremssensor für optimale Sicht und Sicherheit im Dunkeln und ist jetzt über die Hälfte reduziert. (Technik/Hardware)

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has notified Chinese chip design companies that it will suspend production of their most advanced artificial intelligence chips, as Washington continues to impede Beijing’s AI ambitions.

TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, told Chinese customers it would no longer manufacture AI chips at advanced process nodes of 7 nanometers or smaller as of this coming Monday, three people familiar with the matter said.

Two of the people said any future supplies of such semiconductors by TSMC to Chinese customers would be subject to an approval process likely to involve Washington.

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has notified Chinese chip design companies that it will suspend production of their most advanced artificial intelligence chips, as Washington continues to impede Beijing’s AI ambitions.

TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, told Chinese customers it would no longer manufacture AI chips at advanced process nodes of 7 nanometers or smaller as of this coming Monday, three people familiar with the matter said.

Two of the people said any future supplies of such semiconductors by TSMC to Chinese customers would be subject to an approval process likely to involve Washington.

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Nach dem Umstieg von Android auf eine eigene Architektur rät ein chinesischer Blogger vom neuen Harmony OS ab. Der Grund: Viele Apps funktionieren noch nicht. (Harmony OS, Smartphone)

Among the decades-old Windows apps to get renewed attention from Microsoft during the Windows 11 era is Notepad, the basic built-in text editor that was much the same in early 2021 as it had been in the '90 and 2000s. Since then, it has gotten a raft of updates, including a visual redesign, spellcheck and autocorrect, and window tabs.

Given Microsoft's continuing obsession with all things AI, it's perhaps not surprising that the app's latest update (currently in preview for Canary and Dev Windows Insiders) is a generative AI feature called Rewrite that promises to adjust the length, tone, and phrasing of highlighted sentences or paragraphs using generative AI. Users will be offered three rewritten options based on what they've highlighted, and they can select the one they like best or tell the app to try again.

Rewrite appears to be based on the same technology as the Copilot assistant, since it uses cloud-side processing (rather than your local CPU, GPU, or NPU) and requires Microsoft account sign-in to work. The initial preview is available to users in the US, France, the UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany.

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