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The digital debut of Stryka, the tale of a lizard alien who lives in Brooklyn.
In just a few years, Emily Carmichael has gone from making an animated webseries for Penny Arcade to writing Pacific Rim: Maelstrom and directing Powerhouse, the next big project from Steven Spielberg. Today on Ars Technica, we’re proud to host the digital debut of Stryka, one of Carmichael’s short films that rocketed her from gamer geekdom to Hollywood. It’s the tale of a neurotic alien lizard living in Brooklyn, just trying to get by on small time heists. She has just one problem. Her partner in crime just isn’t bringing the zing anymore, and she’s been secretly doing jobs on the side with someone else.
What’s immediately apparent is that Carmichael has an uncanny ability to make a completely alien world feel familiar. Even though main character Stryka (Aimee Mullins) is covered in horns and speaks in clicks, her problems are relatable. She’s torn between two thieves, Callen (Homeland's Rupert Friend) and Peterson (John Behlmann), very different men who both want to work with her. Meanwhile her mother keeps calling to nag about what she’s doing with her life. The scenes with Stryka’s coin-op shrink give us the perfect window on the rather mundane inner life of a lizard thief.
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When I finished reviewing the Emtec GEM Box micro-console recently, I concluded that it’s a nice little box for streaming PC games over the internet using Gamefly Streaming… if you don’t already have an Amazon Fire TV device that can do the same thing. I do have a Fire TV Stick… so I’m tempted to pick up a Fire TV game controller, and Amazon’s making it a little harder to resist that temptation today.
Continue reading Deals of the Day (7-20-2016) at Liliputing.
When I finished reviewing the Emtec GEM Box micro-console recently, I concluded that it’s a nice little box for streaming PC games over the internet using Gamefly Streaming… if you don’t already have an Amazon Fire TV device that can do the same thing. I do have a Fire TV Stick… so I’m tempted to pick up a Fire TV game controller, and Amazon’s making it a little harder to resist that temptation today.
Continue reading Deals of the Day (7-20-2016) at Liliputing.
CSGOLotto, CSGOLounge among those told to cease “commercial use” of Steam accounts.
"The counter-gamblers win." (For now.) (credit: Photo: Steam)
Valve Software, the maker of the Steam online gaming service, sent cease-and-desist notices to 23 online gambling sites on Tuesday in a move to quell complaints about the service's "marketplace" system.
"Your commercial use of Steam accounts is unlicensed and in violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement," Valve general counsel Karl Quackenbush wrote in the letter. "You should immediately cease and desist further use of your Steam accounts for any commercial purpose." Quackenbush then advised the recipients that they had 10 days to comply, after which the company will pursue "all available remedies"—including account termination.
The letter began spreading on social media after it was sent to all 23 sites in question, which included CSGO Lotto and CSGO Lounge, and Valve has confirmed the letter's authenticity to Ars. These sites have racked up headlines as of late by gaming Steam's "marketplace" functionality—and turning some popular in-game items, like cosmetic "skins" for characters and weapons, into veritable casino chips. While Steam itself does not contain direct gambling mechanisms, third-party gambling sites have found simple ways to exploit how Steam works so that players can dump skins into a depository, engage in various games, and then collect more skins (which often have material value by way of eBay reselling) or so that players can trade their accumulated skins outright at these sites for direct payouts of money.
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Osaka café announced with full, Kirby-themed menu, tons of Kirby merch.
While Nintendo's Pokémon Company subsidiary has enjoyed most of the company's good-news headlines in the past two weeks, the company at large has more changes in the horizon, and another "real-world" initiative—teased back in May—is now coming to fruition: an official Nintendo restaurant.
Say hello to the Kirby Café. The Japan-only (for now) restaurant chain was teased last month, but its existence received a full, formal unveiling Wednesday morning in its home country, all revolving around the company's 26-year-old puffball character. The café's first location will open in Osaka on August 5, with another location to follow in Tokyo "soon."
Fans will be able to purchase pastries, drinks, and a mix of noodle and teriyaki menu items. Some of those merely have a character from the game stuck onto the plate as a sticker, while others are shaped to resemble characters and other game content, including Kirby-shaped custard cakes, a cup of soup that looks just like the Maxim Tomato item, and the Whispy Woods tree's face apparently being made out of bread, meat, and beans.
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A ruling handed down by a court in Italy which found Kim Dotcom’s Megavideo liable for TV piracy has been slammed by the entrepreneur’s lawyer. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Ira Rothken says that the notion that a service provider needs to take down content without knowing its URL is fraught with difficulty and could violate freedom of expression.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
While Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload has been the focus of thousands of headlines over the past half decade, the tech entrepreneur also had many other successful ventures in his portfolio.
Among them was Megavideo, a file-hosting service that allowed users to upload video in much the same way as YouTube does today. The ad-supported platform was free to use for any video up to 72 minutes in length, with content of longer duration requiring a subscription to watch in full without waits.
Megavideo disappeared in 2012 following the raids on Megaupload but that didn’t stop Italian TV outfit RTI (Reti Televisive Italiane) suing for copyright infringement. As reported yesterday, a Rome court has just ordered Megavideo to pay $13.4m in damages after the company reportedly failed to respond to takedown notices.
However, the decision is an extremely unusual one. In Megavideo’s absence the court found that the copyright holder’s takedown notices (which listed only TV show titles and contained no URLs) were sufficient for Megavideo to take action. The court also found that video categorization and ad placement undermined Megavideo’s safe harbor.
Speaking with TorrentFreak, Megaupload/Megavideo lawyer Ira Rothken says that the ruling represents a real cause for concern for other companies operating in the same sector.
“The Rome court apparently ruled on this Megavideo case in a default context, unknown to us, and the result is unworkable caselaw on ISP secondary copyright liability,” Rothken explains.
“The court used user-generated categorization and garden variety ads like those found on YouTube and other mainstream cloud sites as adverse factors. Without categories and ads there likely could be no user-generated content sites.”
But unsurprisingly it’s the issue of the URL-free takedown notices that attracts the most attention. In the United States and across Europe, it’s an accepted norm that takedown notices must be specific about the content to be removed. That the Italian court decided otherwise presents a real danger for service providers.
“It was not explained in the Rome ruling why the copyright owners couldn’t provide URLs in the takedown notices and no burden analysis based on competent evidence was done by the Court,” Rothken says.
“The Rome Court’s ruling not requiring specific URLs in cloud takedown notices contradicts US caselaw in the United States in cases which permit ISPs to ignore takedown requests that do not contain a specific link.”
Rothken points out that in US courts the burden is on copyright holders to police their works online and that service providers are not responsible for deciding what is and is not infringing.
“The ISP has no duty to investigate and providing only a title without a URL would require investigation and the making of ad hoc copyright assessments,” he adds.
But that’s exactly what Megavideo would have had to do in the scenario outlined by the court. Without specific URLs being provided in takedown requests, Megavideo would have been left to trawl its databases for titles of videos that contained the same or similar words cited by copyright holders, a notoriously inaccurate method of detecting infringing content.
“Under the Rome Court’s ‘no URL’ requirement, some enterprising plaintiff can do a takedown notice for some video clips called “the Greek wedding” with no URL provided and no one will know what Greek wedding clips they are referring to,” Rothken says.
“Worse, to disambiguate the takedown request the ISP would need a legal copy of the alleged video for comparison purposes obtainable through no court-described method.”
However, even in the event that the original video was successfully obtained from the copyright holder, matters would not be straightforward.
“The ISP would need a warehouse full of folks that would need to watch the target video and thousands of cloud-stored videos and make ad hoc assessments on infringements versus third-party works versus fair use versus licensed uses to avoid overbroad deletions or copyright lawsuits,” Rothken warns.
Aside from the obviously curious details of the ruling, it’s a little surprising that other companies invested in the sector, YouTube for instance, haven’t become involved in a case that appears to have implications for them. Nevertheless, the court has spoken and Rothken says that its ruling poses a real cause for concern.
“This type of secondary infringement rule if allowed to stand arguably violates EU freedom of expression and copyright-related treaties, amongst other things,” he concludes.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Deciphered server data provides precise locations in a handy Google Map.
Hackers have made it relatively simple to see what monsters are lurking nearby in Pokémon Go. (credit: Github / PokemonGoMap)
One of Pokémon Go's defining characteristics is that you never quite know the precise location of nearby Pokémon, since the game only gives an imprecise "radar" with general distances. A group of hackers has set out to change that situation, exploiting Pokémon Go's server responses to create an easy-to-use map that reveals those hidden Pokémon in your immediate area.
The hack is the result of efforts by the PokemonGoDev subreddit, which is working to reverse engineer an API using the data sent and received by the Pokémon Go servers. So far, the group has managed to parse the basic server responses sent by the game, which can be acquired through an SSL tunnel and deciphered using relatively basic protocol buffers.
From there, a little bit of Python scripting work can convert the usually hidden data on nearby Pokémon locations into an easy-to-use Google Maps picture of your augmented reality surroundings. There are step-by-step installation instructions for anyone with even a basic understanding of a command line, as well as recent attempts at a self-contained desktop app and Web-based app for those who want a one-step Poké-mapping solution.
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Users over 300GB a month can be charged extra $50—or even lose their service.
(credit: Getty Images | Jonathan Nackstrand)
CenturyLink next week will begin charging data overage fees very similar to the ones that Comcast has implemented.
Like Comcast, CenturyLink is charging the fees in part of its territory as a "trial" designed to gauge customer response before a wider rollout. The fees are also $10 for every 50GB of additional data, the same as Comcast.
While Comcast is limiting monthly overage charges to $200, CenturyLink's overage fees will not exceed $50 per month. But CenturyLink hasn't announced any option for residential customers to purchase unlimited data, and even paying the overage fees doesn't guarantee that customers can use the Internet as much as they like. Customers who don't reduce their usage or switch to a pricier package that allows more data usage could be disconnected entirely, CenturyLink says.
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Ein leuchtender Ballon, der Daten empfängt, die per Laser übertragen werden: Facebook-Mitarbeiter haben ein System für die optische Datenübertragung entwickelt. Es ist Teil des Projekts, entlegene Regionen der Welt aus der Luft mit schnellem Internet zu versorgen. (
M-net treibt den Ausbau der Glasfaser in München weiter voran. "In der Regel benötigt der Bautrupp pro Straße nur wenige Tage für das Verlegen der Kabel und den jeweiligen Hausanschluss", hieß es. (
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