Perifit S: Joystick trainiert Beckenbodenmuskulatur

Mit einer Kombination aus Joystick und Smartphone-App will eine französische Firma Frauen helfen, ihre Beckenbodenmuskulatur zu trainieren. Gesteuert wird dabei nicht mit den Händen. Die Kickstarter-Kampagne wurde innerhalb von zwölf Stunden zum Erfolg. (Kickstarter, Smartphone)

Mit einer Kombination aus Joystick und Smartphone-App will eine französische Firma Frauen helfen, ihre Beckenbodenmuskulatur zu trainieren. Gesteuert wird dabei nicht mit den Händen. Die Kickstarter-Kampagne wurde innerhalb von zwölf Stunden zum Erfolg. (Kickstarter, Smartphone)

Russian MP Says She Loves Torrents, Hates Web Blockades

When it comes to Internet file-sharing, most mainstream politicians rarely have anything good to say, but for Senator Lyudmila Bokova of the Russian parliament, things are clearly quite different. “I like to use torrents,” she says, “because they provide the ability to download information quickly and cheaply.”

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

From Canada through the United States, to the UK, Europe, and beyond, few politicians want to be seen supporting copyright infringement.

With the notable exception of the Pirate Party, for most politicians, piracy is something to fight against, not promote. Over in Russia, however, they like to do things a little bit differently.

On the one hand, the country is cracking down really hard on pirate sites, blocking them left and right while planning new legislation that will hold social networks liable for the piracy of their users. On the other, we have Senator Lyudmila Bokova who didn’t get the memo.

Speaking at the “Internet and Law” event organized by Russian news outlet Kommersant, the Federation Council member steered away from criticism to endorse piracy as a convenient and cost-effective method of obtaining content.

“I like to use torrents because they provide the ability to download information quickly and cheaply,” Bokova said.

“To go to the cinema today – just look at the price of tickets: 1000 rubles ($17.78). For a family of three people go to the movies it’s 3,000 rubles ($53.34) from the budget. It’s expensive. A torrent is cheap.”

But the Senator, who served as deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building, didn’t stop there.

Speaking with RNS, Bokova condemned Russia’s plans to block pirate sites without a trial. She criticized amendments that will force search engines such as Google and local giant Yandex to remove links to sites from search results.

“I think if we follow the path of pre-trial blocking [of pirate content and search engine links] it will create more problems in our society. I believe that in this case a court order, in my opinion, is the most correct approach,” she said.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 04/17/17

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. ‘Logan’ tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Kong: Skull Island’. ‘Split’ completes the top three.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Logan, which was released as a HDrip with hardcoded Korean subtitles this week, is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:
Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1 (4) Logan (Subbed HDRip) 8.6 / trailer
2 (1) Kong: Skull Island (Subbed HDRip) 7.0 / trailer
3 (2) Split 7.0 / trailer
4 (…) La La Land 8.4 / trailer
5 (3) Rogue One 8.0 / trailer
6 (…) The Fate of the Furious 7.4 / trailer
7 (7) Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 7.6 / trailer
8 (10) Ghost in The Shell 6.9 / trailer
9 (…) The Great Wall 7.6 / trailer
10 (8) Boyka: Undisputed 8.3 / trailer

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Fire TV Stick 2 im Test: Der Stick macht den normalen Fire TV (fast) überflüssig

Amazon motzt den Fire TV Stick auf. Der Fire TV Stick 2 bietet eine deutlich höhere Geschwindigkeit als der Vorgänger. Außerdem glänzt er mit einer sehr umfassenden Sprachbedienung via Alexa. Die wenigsten werden noch einen normalen Fire TV benötigen. Ein Test von Ingo Pakalski (Fire TV Stick, Amazon)

Amazon motzt den Fire TV Stick auf. Der Fire TV Stick 2 bietet eine deutlich höhere Geschwindigkeit als der Vorgänger. Außerdem glänzt er mit einer sehr umfassenden Sprachbedienung via Alexa. Die wenigsten werden noch einen normalen Fire TV benötigen. Ein Test von Ingo Pakalski (Fire TV Stick, Amazon)

Ultra HD Blu-ray, VR Playback Comes to the PC, PowerDVD 17 Released

Whether it’s VR or 4K, the latest version of PowerDVD promises to have something for you – but it all comes at a cost!While the price of the fully featured Ultra version of PowerDVD, now in version 17, has stayed the same (at $99.95), the hardware cost…



Whether it's VR or 4K, the latest version of PowerDVD promises to have something for you - but it all comes at a cost!

While the price of the fully featured Ultra version of PowerDVD, now in version 17, has stayed the same (at $99.95), the hardware cost needed to get the best out of it is significant, to say the least.

To play back the latest 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, you'll need at least the latest generation (Kaby Lake) Intel Core i processor that has added support for Intel Software Guard Extensions (for, you guessed it, copy protection), and a motherboard to match.

You'll also need a GPU that supports HDCP 2.2, which integrated Kaby Lake CPUs with Intel HD Graphics 630 or Intel Iris Graphics 640, may offer (and this is probably the cheapest option - the other option means you'll need something like the Nvidia GTX 970, which will set you back a couple of hundred bucks).

And of course, you'll need an Ultra HD Blu-ray reader drive, which is going for about USD$270 on eBay at the moment.

That's all not including the 4K monitor with HDCP 2.2 that you'll need, and if you want HDR, you'll have to get that supported too on both your GPU and monitor.

PowerDVD 17 also features support for the latest VR devices from Oculus Rift and HTC, allowing you to watch your favourite flicks in a virtual environment, or watch 3D-360 immersive videos.

The requirements for VR are lighter (only slightly), and you'll still need a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 290 or equivalent according to PowerDVD's specs page.

But if you've got all of this already, maybe because you won the lottery recently, then you're in for a truly next-gen viewing experience. So what are you waiting for? Buy PowerDVD 17 today, using this link so this author can make a bit of cash and build his own Ultra HD Blu-ray/VR capable PC!

Patent troll with an “Internet Drink Mixer” and a nonexistent office could be in trouble

“My lifelong passion is inventing,” says patent owner, seeking $75,000 per lawsuit.

Enlarge (credit: USPTO)

This February, Garmin International got sued (PDF) by inventor Leigh Rothschild and his patent-holding company, Rothschild Connected Devices Innovations LLC (RCDI). RCDI had already sued 68 other companies. A few weeks later, Rothschild's lawyer got in touch. He wasn't interested in discussing the technology behind his client's two patents, which describe making customized mixed beverages. Instead, he asked Garmin to get on board with Rothschild's "early settlement program," for a fast payout of $75,000.

Garmin didn't pay up. Instead, the company's outside counsel Rachael Lamkin sent a letter to Rothschild's lawyer, explaining that his patents on a "system and method for creating a personalized consumer product" weren't valid, and ran afoul of Section 101 of the US Patent laws. That's the section that bars patents that are overly abstract, including "do it on a computer" type patents.

"Whether or not systems and methods for generating customized products are patent-eligible is a well-trodden question, repeatedly decided in the negative," Lamkin informed him, citing several earlier legal cases.

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Reddit Rejects 81% Of All ‘Piracy’ Takedown Notices

Reddit has published new data on the number of piracy takedown notices the company receives. During the past year, copyright holders sent 3,294 DMCA takedown requests to the community-driven platform. Of these takedown notices a surprisingly high number were rejected, 81 percent of the total.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

With millions of pageviews per day, Reddit is without doubt one of the most visited sites on the Internet.

The community-oriented platform has “subreddits” dedicated to pretty much every topic you can think of, including several dedicated to online piracy and related issues.

While the vast majority remain within the boundaries of the law, on occasion users post copyright-infringing material. This means that, like any user-generated site of its size, Reddit also has to process a steady stream of takedown requests from rightsholders.

To give the public insight into the process and volume, Reddit regularly publishes a transparency report. In the most recent report, published a few days ago, the company outlines the number of DMCA takedown notices received and how many of these were “valid.”

“For a request to be valid, it must comply with the statutory requirements outlined in the DMCA,” Reddit explains.

“Each DMCA takedown notice is reviewed carefully and, in circumstances where content is actually hosted on our servers, we assess whether the existence of the content on Reddit can fall under an exception, such as ‘fair use’ of the copyrighted material.”

If the company believes that the reported content might be covered by an exemption under copyright law, they contact the copyright holder asking for additional information. If the claim turns out to be legitimate, it is then removed.

Unlike some other sites and services, Reddit doesn’t blindly remove a posting that links to copyrighted content hosted on an external site. The company previously stated that “links do not generally infringe copyright.”

This is definitely a different approach than other companies, including Google, take, and it’s likely to be reflected in the numbers as well.

So how much content was removed in 2016?

According to the transparency report, Reddit received 3,294 copyright removal requests over the entire year. Not really an impressive number compared to a service like Google, but substantial nonetheless.

The rejection rate is without a doubt impressive. The company says that it was required to remove content from the site in 610 instances, which is 19 percent. That means that of all DMCA requests, 81 percent was rejected.

That’s quite a significant percentage. At Google, for example, more than 90 percent of all reported content is removed.

While the number of takedown requests Reddit receives pales in comparison to other Internet services, it’s good to see that the company carefully reviews all notices to prevent unwarranted censorship. It will be interesting to see how the volume of requests and the removal rate changes over time.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Doctor Who’s intriguing new cast gets a slow start with “The Pilot”

Showrunner Steven Moffat starts his swansong series with kind of a thud.

Enlarge (credit: Des Willie/BBC)

This is a post-UK broadcast review of Doctor Who: The Pilot. River Song always warned the Doctor against spoilers, so be sure to watch the episode first. Episodes of Doctor Who air on Saturdays at 7:20pm UK time on BBC One, and 9pm EDT on BBC America.

This is not a Dalek episode. It's a "bigger on the inside" episode. But it also adopts an obvious lesbian psycho trope—which is a pity: outgoing showrunner Steven Moffat makes the Doctor’s new companion gay and her first encounter with a monster happens to be an unhinged, shape shifting stalker who repeats everything Bill Potts says while dripping water onto the floor. Poor house guest, certainly. And probably not someone you would want to bring home to your family.

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PGP public key and self-service postal kiosk expose online drug dealers

Second of 2 AlphaBay sellers arrested in 2016 pleads guilty: Abdullah Almashwali.

Enlarge / Abdullah Almashwali and his co-defendant used a self-serve kiosk like this one to mail illegal drugs. (credit: Aranami)

Just days before he was set to go to trial in Fresno, California, a Brooklyn man agreed to the government's assertion that he sold heroin and cocaine on AlphaBay. That site is one of the largest Dark Web marketplaces currently operating since Silk Road was seized and shut down in 2013.

On Friday morning, lawyers representing Abdullah Almashwali appeared before US District Judge Dale A. Drozd and filed a guilty plea to three counts of drug charges, likely in exchange for a lighter sentence. Almashwali was charged in August 2016 along with a co-conspirator, Chaudhry Ahmad Farooq. Farooq pled guilty in January 2017 and has yet to be sentenced.

According to an affidavit filed by a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the two men—selling under the names "DarkApollo" and "Area51"—made key mistakes online that ultimately betrayed them. Those monikers advertised that they were directly importing heroin from Afghanistan.

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Natural gas is leaking from city pipes, but spotting leaks is getting easier.

Repairing the largest 20% of leaks could cut emissions in half.

(credit: Steve Harwood)

Researchers from Colorado State University have been working with Google Street View to map pervasive natural-gas leaks. These leaks come from pipes that can be buried three-to-four feet below city streets. Many of the millions of miles of piping that deliver natural gas locally to urban and suburban homes are decades old—in some cases piping can be more than a century old. Older pipes can be made of cast-iron or bare steel, and they are often corroded or broken in places. But because they’re buried and because natural gas is invisible, it’s hard to tell when a pipe is leaking underneath a sidewalk. Sometimes, digging up and replacing a pipe isn’t worthwhile for the utility that owns it if the leaks isn’t an immediate risk to life and limb.

Besides the occasional explosion, there’s not much of a health risk associated with small natural-gas leaks. But natural gas is mostly comprised of methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas. Although carbon dioxide sticks around in the atmosphere longer than methane does, it’s much more potent at warming the Earth in the short term than carbon dioxide.

That should make fixing the aging, leaking pipes under our cities a municipal priority. Although utilities will sometimes send employees out to neighborhoods to measure gas leaks from their pipes, they’re not always keen to share that data with citizens or even researchers. Even if utility workers are willing to share, making a complete census of all the leaks can be challenging.

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