Wer Ubuntu 14.04.4 einsetzt und einen kompatiblen Grafikchip besitzt, der kann jetzt einen neuen Beta-Treiber von AMD herunterladen. Dieser setzt die Voraussetzungen für das Vulkan-API um. Allerdings mit einigen Einschränkungen. (Vulkan, AMD) 
Weekly News Roundup (20 March 2016)
From website blocking in Australia to webpage removal by Netflix, read the news roundup for the week ending 20 March 2016
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From website blocking in Australia to webpage removal by Netflix, read the news roundup for the week ending 20 March 2016
Chinese Company’s ‘Fury’ over 4K Piracy Claims, Countersues Warner, Intel
Warner Bros. and Intel’s lawsuit against a Chinese company that makes the HDFury devices has just been turned on its head, with the Chinese firm countersuing.Warner and Intel sued LegendSky for making HDMI and DisplayPort devices that bypass the HDCP c…
Warner Bros. and Intel's lawsuit against a Chinese company that makes the HDFury devices has just been turned on its head, with the Chinese firm countersuing.
Warner and Intel sued LegendSky for making HDMI and DisplayPort devices that bypass the HDCP copy protection present, to allow for video capturing and conversion. While the initial lawsuit seemed fairly straight forward, especially after a spate of 4K rips flooded the torrent scene, rips that were eventually traced back to one of LegendSky's devices.
But LegendSky has hit back, claiming that the assertions made in the original lawsuit are simply not true, and that their devices do not strip HDCP protection at all.
Instead, LegendSky explains via their counterclaim, their HDFury devices merely convert the tough to strip newer HDCP versions to HDCP 1.4, which has been cracked since at least 2010.
LegendSky asserts that this type of conversion is actually allowed under the HDCP licensing agreement. Interestingly, LegendSky also notes that serveral HDCP licensees, including Netflix, Disney, NBC and CBS, have purchased HDFury devices for legitimate purposes.
According to LegendSky, the real reasons for the lawsuit has nothing to do with piracy, and more to do with the bottom line.
"In reality, then, the Complaint is a bludgeon to use against Defendant so as to unlawfully expand the scope of Plaintiffs’ copyright monopolies, and protect Plaintiff DCP’s HDCP monopoly licensing rents in the relevant market," LegendSky writes in their counterclaim.
LegendSky has asked the court to dismiss the original complaint, and has even gone as far as asking for damages and penalties to be awarded against the plaintiffs.
SXSW 2016 on BitTorrent: 10.33 GB of Free Music
The South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival is one of the largest and most popular in the United States. For more than a decade SXSW has been sharing DRM-free songs of the performing artists, over 69 GB worth so far. This year’s release breaks a new record with 1,593 tracks totaling more than 10 gigabytes.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Since 2005 the SXSW music festival has published thousands of free tracks from participating artists.
For some of the first releases the festival organizers created the torrents for the artist showcases themselves, but since 2008 this task has been taken over by the public.
Luckily all of the SXSW showcase MP3s are still freely available on the festival’s site for sampling purposes, so it only takes one person to get a torrent up and running.
For the past several years Ben Stolt has taken the time and effort to put all the MP3s on BitTorrent, and the latest 2016 release consists of two torrents containing 1,593 tracks.
That’s a record-breaking 10.39 gigabytes of free music in total, almost four times the file size of the first torrent in 2005.
All the tracks released for the previous editions are also still available for those people who want to fill up their harddrives without having to invest thousands of dollars. The 2005 – 2016 archives now total more than 69 gigabytes.
Every year SXSW torrents are a great success, with many thousands of music aficionados downloading gigabytes of free music across virtually every genre from both established acts and upcoming bands.
TorrentFreak spoke to Ben Stolt who spends several hours preparing the releases each year, in part for his personal pleasure.
“My motivation is in part selfish, because, like many others, my friends and I all use the contents of the torrent to prepare for our week at SXSW Music. But without fail the emails start coming in January and February asking if there will be a torrent,” Stolt says.
“Many people come back every year, so I can’t leave them hanging,” he adds.
The job comes witch challenges though. SXSW doesn’t always make it easy to publish the tracks. For example, a few years ago Stolt had to start re-writing the ID3 tags based on the artist pages, as SXSW stopped doing so.
“Without that, the tracks would be a giant mess and mostly unidentifiable since the file names on the SXSW site are purely numeric. Also in 2014 they abruptly switched to using SoundCloud for the samples, but that was thankfully short-lived and things were back to normal the next year,” Stolt notes.
The efforts pay off though. Many people love the SXSW torrents which attract tens of thousands of downloaders each year. For some, it almost makes up for not being able to attend the festival in person.
“Appreciate the amount of work involved to make it happen. Can’t get to SXSW, so having these torrents available are the next best thing,” one downloader responds.
This year’s SXSW music festival is currently underway in Austin, Texas and ends on Sunday. The torrents, however, are expected to live on for as long as there are people sharing.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Newly identified bacteria cleans up common plastic
Two enzymes take a common plastic back to its starting materials.
(credit: AJC Photography)
Plastics are everywhere. Once they get into the environment as trash, they stay there for years, decades, or even centuries. That's because most plastic is chemically inert and immune to the enzymatic processes involved in biodegradation. We've tried to curtail plastic pollution through recycling and by creating plastics that are biodegradable or compostable. But what about all the plastic litter that's already out there and could persist long after our grandchildren are gone?
Life may be coming to our aid. A team of scientists in Japan, led by Shosuke Yoshida of Kyoto University, has recently discovered a species of bacteria that can degrade a plastic called PET.
Identifying microbes that degrade PET
PET stands for polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic with good mechanical, barrier, and optical properties. Bottles for water and soft drinks are just a couple of PET's many, many uses. PET is a polyester compound with a high aromatic content, which makes it chemically inert. As a result, it is typically considered resistant to microbial degradation, although certain fungi grow on a mineral medium containing PET. Roughly 56 million tons of PET are produced each year, and a lot of that ends up in the environment.
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After Half a Decade, We Now Know What YIFY Stands For
For several years YIFY has been one of Hollywood’s biggest arch-rivals and most-recognized pirate brands. Interestingly, it always remained a mystery what those four letters stand for. Now the veil has been lifted after a New Zealand court confirmed the name of the group’s founder.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
In 2010 a fresh movie piracy brand began to conquer the Internet. Bypassing the so-called ‘Scene’, YIFY joined a new breed of release groups who publish their work directly to torrent sites.
In fact, YIFY, which later rebranded to YTS, started its own torrent website featuring high quality releases of the latest movies.
As the years went by the group amassed a huge following, and a year ago its website generated millions of pageviews per day. A true success story, but one that ended abruptly last October.
Hollywood sources tracked down the founder of YIFY and filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit in New Zealand. This meant the end of YIFY and YTS, but surprisingly the case was never heard in court.
Instead, both parties agreed to a private settlement outside of court, keeping the identity of one of YIFY’s key players out of the public eye. However, this didn’t last long.
Last week a New Zealand court confirmed the identity of the YIFY founder to the local Sunday Star Times. The news outlet reported that the movie studios filed their lawsuit against Yiftach Swery, a 23-year-old app and website developer.
Several years ago YIFY told TorrentFreak that the name was “just a random alias” but this explanation is hard to maintain now.
While we have always doubted the randomness of the popular tag, Yiftach Swery leaves little room for speculation.
Indeed, we confirmed with someone in the know that the YIF part is derived directly from the founder’s name. In theory, the same could be said for YTS but this stands for “YIFY Torrents Solutions,” our source says.
It’s worth noting that Yiftach was not the only person behind YIFY. In fact, towards the end he was no longer actively involved in encoding and uploading movies.
How many other people were involved in the group remains unknown. TorrentFreak did hear that other people connected to YIFY have been “approached” by the movie industry over the years, but Yiftach is the only one who signed a settlement deal.
One thing is very clear though, the original YIFY team is not coming back. Instead, Yiftach and his former colleagues will probably focus on picking up their regular lives again.
That said, the YIFY name lives on in the memories of million of pirates. While most of its shine has been lost, YIFY will certainly go down in history.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Take it from a pro, Street Fighter 5’s changes are for the greater good
One Guinness Worlds Record-holding champ believes the community needs SFV to succeed.
1987's Street Fighter wasn't the first fighting game—see the likes of Yie Ar Kung Fu and Karate Champ—but it remains the most influential. With three levels of attack speed and strength for punches and kicks mapped to six buttons (replacing an earlier version with pressure-sensitive pads), along with three special attacks that required a specific combination of button presses and joystick movements, Street Fighter was far more complex that its trivial title implied.
Street Fighter II improved on its predecessor to that point that it was almost unrecognisable. Eight playable characters. Hugely improved graphics. And a combo system that—while fabled to have come about by accident, rather than by design—resulted in huge depth. For children of the '90s, huddling round a coveted cabinet in a local chippy, mini-cab station, arcade, or wherever else one would randomly turn up, Street Fighter was a rite of passage.
Many of those children, myself included, went on to enter tournaments. A lucky few became superstars. Others became heroes. Despite its ups and down—particularly when it comes to female participants—the fighting game community that evolved out of Street Fighter is thriving. 2015's Evo tournament, arguably the largest fighting game tournament in the world with a prize pot of over $300,000 (£200,000), was watched by just under four million people. The most popular game in the tournament? Ultra Street Fighter IV, which drew more 250,000 viewers on Twitch during the momentous final between Momochi and Gamerbee. Sure, Evo might ostensibly be about more than just Street Fighter thanks to having games like Super Smash Bros. Melee and Killer Instinct on its roster, but to the average joe who might not know his high kick from his Hadouken, Street Fighter is Evo.
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Tauchfähiges Fluggerät: Der Copter, der aus der Tiefe kommt
Forscher haben einen Quadcopter gebaut, der über mehrere Monate lang in einer Tiefe von über 100 Metern in Salzwasser verbleiben kann. Anschließend taucht Cracuns auf und fliegt los - ohne Korrosionsschäden. (
To arms! A revamped Game of Thrones card game delivers combat and treachery
Ars test drives the second edition of the game inspired by George R.R. Martin’s world.
This is how a typical game looks a few turns in. Of course, your game board won't be this tidy. (credit: Fantasy Flight Games)
Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage right here—and let us know what you think.
Six decades have passed since J.R.R. Tolkien's The Return of the King first hit bookstores, and since then, The Lord of the Rings has reigned over the fantasy genre. Yet in recent years, no challenger has come closer to toppling Tolkien's epic in popular culture than George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.
The series' widespread popularity, due in part to a wildly successful HBO series, has opened the door to countless spinoff products. But even before the show brought Tyrion Lannister into our living rooms, Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) had been catering to George R.R. Martin fans for years. And because Martin’s world is populated with dozens of vivid, unpredictable, and often downright evil characters, it's no surprise that FFG launched A Game of Thrones: The Card Game back in 2008. Who wouldn't want to do battle as Jaime, Cersei, or Tywin under House Lannister, or wield Sand Snakes as The Red Viper of House Martell, or fight alongside the other factions?
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Südkorea will bis 2020 über einen Fonds 760 Millionen Euro in die Förderung von künstlicher Intelligenz in der Industrie investieren. (
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