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The DragonBox Pyra is a portable computer that looks like a cross between a tiny laptop and a Nintendo DX game console… and it kind of works like a cross between those devices as well. It’s got a 5 inch display, a QWERTY keyboard, a Linux-based operating system that can handle desktop apps as well as games, and physical gaming buttons.

It’s been under development for several years, and it’s expected to be available for purchase soon for about 500 Euros (plus VAT).

Continue reading DragonBox Pyra pre-orders begin (open Source handheld gaming PC) at Liliputing.

Framestore's rather low-key office in Soho. The company's 1990s-era logo is still in the window. (credit: Alan Travers)

Adult entertainment in Soho has now been squeezed down to just a couple of small streets

In a darkened room on the backstreets of London's red light district, Mike McGee stared at a screen. Surrounded by a thick wall of cigarette smoke and impatient chain-smoking clients, he swiped a pen across the table, his movement replicated with surprising accuracy as a pixel-perfect line on the screen above. The clients—TV producers from the BBC—were impressed. In just a few short minutes, McGee had transformed a single frame of video into the beginnings of a title sequence. In a world where labour-intensive optical effects and manual rotoscoping were the norm, this was a revelation.

For 12 years, McGee worked out of this room, painting onto the screen, his eyes left bloodshot and burning from the smoke as runners dashed in and out to empty overflowing ashtrays. It was a painstaking process; the Quantel Paintbox and its pressure-sensitive stylus were groundbreaking pieces of technology when they were released in 1981, but they had their limitations. The huge 14-inch platter hard drive could store 160MB of data, enough for just over six seconds of video at 25 FPS. Longer pieces required playing out each frame to tape before wiping the hard drive, a risky process that resulted in McGee and his staff working eight-hour shifts around the clock to minimise cockups.

The Paintbox and its multi-frame follow up Harry—which could store up to 30 seconds of footage and manipulate multiple frames of animation at once—would come to dominate the TV industry throughout the 1980s and early '90s, defining the decade's iconic visual style (see Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" video). It would even star in its own TV show on the BBC, Painting with Light, alongside artists like David Hockney. And for McGee, a graduate of the famous Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, the Paintbox would spark a career in the visual effects industry spanning nearly three decades.

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Three years ago many popular torrent sites added an option to donate via Bitcoin. The Pirate Bay was one of the first to jump on board, a development which caused concern among copyright holders.

The RIAA even informed the U.S. trade representative about this looming threat. The music industry group warned that Bitcoin could make it harder to crack down on pirate sites.

“In April 2013, the site started accepting donations from the public by Bitcoin, a digital currency, which operates using peer-to-peer technology,” the RIAA wrote.

“There are no central authority or banks involved which makes it very difficult to seize or trace Bitcoin funds,” the music industry group added.

Bitcoin does indeed make it harder to seize funds, as law enforcement would need access to the computer where the wallet is kept.

However, Bitcoin also makes it easy to see how much donations are coming in. All transactions are public and traceable which allows anyone to see how much money Pirate Bay is making through donations.

This is exactly what we decided to do. Using the publicly listed Bitcoin wallet address, which is shown on every Pirate Bay page we found that 376 donations, roughly one donation per day, were sent over the past year.

The total amount of Bitcoin received during this period adds up to 8.21 BTC. At the current exchange rate this equals $3,500 in donations over the past twelve months, or $9.34 per day.

Needless to say, Pirate Bay’s operators are not getting rich off user donations.

It appears that the interest in donating has tapered off over the years. Last year Custos Media Technologies reported that the site had received 126.64 Bitcoin in its various wallets between 2013 and 2015, which is significantly more.

That being said, even the 8.21 it received last year is a fortune when compared to other prominent torrent sites.

ExtraTorrent also lists a Bitcoin address on its site, as well as in the uploads of their ETTV and ETRG release groups. This wallet amassed a total of 4.31 in donations since 2013 which is roughly $1 per day.

Again, that’s quite a treasure trove when we look at the donations that are coming in at KickassTorrents, which is currently the most-visited torrent site.

Since 2013 KAT has raked in a measly 0.96 BTC, which is roughly $250, or two dozen cents per day. Admittedly, KAT doesn’t promote donations and the address is only listed in the site’s FAQ.

It’s pretty safe to say that if the RIAA and other copyright holders are concerned about the revenue going to pirate sites and groups, there’s little to worry about in respect of Bitcoin or user donations in general.

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

From surprises in the GoT season premier to a surprise addition in the latest piracy watch list , read the news roundup for the week ending 1 May 2016

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In this conceptual image, eight SuperDraco thrusters fire as a Dragon spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere at supersonic speeds. (credit: SpaceX)

This week SpaceX announced plans to land a Dragon spacecraft on Mars by 2018. This would be a monumental achievement for NASA or any other national space agency, let alone a single company, considering the 6,000kg Dragon is nearly an order of magnitude more massive than anything previously landed on the red planet.

With the long-term goal of Mars colonization squarely in its crosshair, SpaceX has been testing key technologies needed to land on Mars for years. One of them is supersonic retro-propulsion, which Ars revealed has been tested on upgraded Falcon 9 rockets since September 2013. Supersonic retro-propulsion proved a resounding success.

But the Falcon 9 and its Merlin engines won't be going to Mars. SpaceX will use a different type of propulsion, the SuperDraco thruster, to propulsively land on the red planet. Here's how the landing will work: as the Dragon (dubbed Red Dragon) begins its descent to Mars at supersonic speeds, the spacecraft will fire eight of these thrusters into this onrushing atmosphere.

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