Month: July 2025

Meta is showing off its latest work in developing a new way to interact with electronic devices – one that doesn’t require a mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, or voice and which could make it simpler to interact with AR glasses… but which could also help people with disabilities to use PCs and phones. It’s basically a […]

The post Lilbits: Meta’s experimental new input device, Blender for tablets, and new Raspberry Pi HATs add MicroSD Express and Radar support appeared first on Liliputing.

Next month marks the 20th anniversary of one of the most devastating natural disasters in US history: Hurricane Katrina, a Category 3 storm that made landfall on August 29, 2005. The storm itself was bad enough, but the resulting surge of water caused havoc for New Orleans in particular when the city's protective levees failed, flooding much of New Orleans and killing 1,392 people. National Geographic is marking the occasion with a new documentary series: Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time.

The five-part documentary is directed by Oscar nominee Traci A. Curry (Attica) and co-produced by Ryan Coogler's Proximity Media, in conjunction with Lightbox. The intent was to go beyond the headlines of yesteryear and re-examine the many systemic failures that occurred while also revealing "stories of survival, heroism, and resilience," Proximity's executive producers said in a statement. "It's a vital historical record and a call to witness, remember and recon with the truth of Hurricane Katrina's legacy."

Race Against Time doesn't just rehash the well-worn narrative of the disaster; it centers the voices of the people who were there on the ground: residents, first responders, officials, and so forth. Among those interviewed for the documentary is geologist/marine scientist Ivor Van Heerden, author of The Storm: What Went Wrong and why During Hurricane Katrina: the Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist (2006).

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For pirate sites trying to stay online in the face of expanding site blocking measures, a supply of effective domains and an operational DNS are absolutely critical.

No surprise then that both are considered priority anti-piracy targets to be blocked, tampered with, seized by law enforcement, or sacrificed when anti-piracy groups get a little too close.

Courts are also known to transfer ownership of domains in copyright lawsuits, or if the parties remain on speaking terms, a private agreement can have a similar effect. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment and the Motion Picture Association have amassed more domains previously used for piracy than any other group in history.

ACE: Domain Hunters

Pirate domains are ‘seized’ through various legal means to ensure they aren’t used for the same purpose again. They’re ultimately transferred to the Motion Picture Association, which still has decades-old examples such as isoHunt.com in its archives.

Relics like these are unlikely to see action anytime soon but have proven useful in the past.

The MPAA’s ‘You Can Click But You Can’t Hide’ campaign in 2003 saw pirate domains like LokiTorrent.com briefly converted into online PSA billboards. A similar concept is operational today but is substantially more sophisticated than its predecessors.

There are no veiled threats on the thousands of domains seized by ACE over the last few years; just a seizure notice followed by a redirect to the ACE portal, where visitors can discover more about ACE members and learn why consuming legal content is a better, safer choice than the alternative.

ACE/MPA Builds on a Solid Q1 2025

As reported in April, ACE domain seizures were numerous in the first quarter of 2025. Our count of around 80 domains is an estimate based on information from various sources since no official figures are made available. In Q2 2025, over 110 domains were commandeered by MPA/ACE, redirecting millions of unsuspecting visitors to its anti-piracy portal.

In many ways the seizure list for Q2 2025 paints a fairly typical yet dismal picture of how ISP domain blocking fuels endless hopping from domain to domain as sites deploy the most obvious countermeasure. Some domains are later handed over to ACE in bulk, marking the end of the site. For other platforms that simply means starting the process all over again, in preparation for the next time, and the time after that.

While ACE/MPA hasn’t shown particular interest in Italy-focused streaming brand Altadefinizione, its domains wouldn’t look out of place when compared to those of counterparts Calcio and Calciostreaming in the list above.

How many domains the site has burned through circumventing blocking measures in Italy is unclear but there are at least 900 domains with similar branding and with the addition of just a single character, at least 900 more become available – ad infinitum. In the near future, this could become standard practice for the majority of large sites.

A Messy Environment

In addition to reliance on data from third-party sources to determine seizures, there are several complications that could lead to more or less being counted in a period overall.

Some pirate operators appear to direct their domains towards the ACE portal seemingly voluntarily, with historical records showing a few domains attempting to use MPA DNS for short unexplained periods. Some domain extensions also present challenges when trying to determine links to a particular site and in a relatively small number of cases, that ultimately proves impossible.

Since pirates tend to register domains for the shortest time possible, MPA renewals of expiring domains that look very much like dozens of others it also controls (and dozens of newcomers it does not) can make the checking process a chore, even for a few outliers.

Once treated as prized possessions, domains are now considered consumables; register, rinse out, and then replace – often with a second-rate, confusingly similar copy, also to be dumped in the not-too-distant future.

Transparency

With domain seizures and site blocking measures on an upward trajectory, and transparency alluded to but rarely provided, tracking with any degree of accuracy is becoming more difficult. Eventually it will only be possible for those with access to the data and/or interested parties in a position to commit significant resources.

Finally, like most websites these days, visitors to the ACE portal are subject to tracking. In practical terms, that’s likely to be of limited concern compared to the undocumented extras available at whichever pirate site people were originally hoping to visit, or indeed, most search engines and shopping platforms available today. Nevertheless, it’s still valuable data.

Access to data is important, but currently extremely one-sided.

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

Die FCC will den Frequenzbereich 430 MHz bis 440 MHz weltweit an AST Spacemobile geben. Doch Störungen des Amateurfunks müssten beseitigt werden. (FCC, Bundesnetzagentur)

Die neuen Drohungen von SAP-Chef Klein für Stellenabbau sind für den Betriebsrat ein Kulturwandel. Dies sei Teil des neuen Performance-Managements. (SAP, KI)

Github Spark verwandelt Alltagssprache in funktionsfähige Software - ohne dass Programmierkenntnisse erforderlich sind. (Github, KI)

Die US-Tochter der Allianz bestätigt einen Cyberangriff auf ihre Kundendatenbank. Über eine Million Versicherte könnten betroffen sein. (Cybercrime, Security)

Das Unternehmen Auterion liefert bis Jahresende Zehntausende autonome Kampf-Drohnen-Systeme an die Ukraine. Bald sollen sie auch im Schwarm agieren können. (Drohne, KI)

For decades we’ve been trying to make the robots smarter and more physically capable by mimicking biological intelligence and movement. “But in doing so, we’ve been just replicating the results of biological evolution—I say we need to replicate its methods,” argues Philippe Wyder, a developmental robotics researcher at Columbia University. Wyder led a team that demonstrated a machine with a rudimentary form of what they’re calling a metabolism.

He and his colleagues built a robot that could consume other robots to physically grow, become stronger, more capable, and continue functioning.

Nature’s methods

The idea of robotic metabolism combines various concepts in AI and robotics. The first is artificial life, which Wyder termed “a field where people study the evolution of organisms through computer simulations.” Then there is the idea of modular robots: reconfigurable machines that can change their architecture by rearranging collections of basic modules. That was pioneered in the US by Daniela Rus or Mark Yim at Carnegie Mellon University in the 1990s.

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Die Spitzenverbände der Immobilienkonzerne und Kabelnetz-Betreiber wollen kein Gesetz, das Inhouse-Glasfaser schnell ermöglicht. Wildberger handele gegen ihren Willen. (Bundesministerium für Digitalisierung un, Vodafone)