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That Dragon, Cancer is a game about love, hope, and letting go.

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“You have to let me feel this!”

Ryan Green is half-shouting, half-sobbing at his wife Amy. They’re fighting over the way that Ryan is dealing with the knowledge that their son’s diagnosis will lead to a future of palliative care and grief. We never see their faces, never get more than that solitary audio clip, but it’s a powerful, poignant moment that ends with us plunging Ryan deeper into an ocean of light.

That Dragon, Cancer is not an easy game to experience. It’s a eulogy, an autobiography, a cry into the dark. It’s one family’s endeavour to make sense of a looming tragedy, to press pause on a life that is—was— running out of time. Joel, the tow-headed child at the heart of the whole endeavour, died in March last year. He would have turned seven on the game’s January 12th launch.

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Amazon’s entry-level Fire tablet is already probably one of the best tablets you can buy for $50. But for the next week you pick one up for just $40. The company is running an “Amazon Device Deals” sale with discounts on a number of Fire tablets, Kindle eReaders, and bundles that knock between $10 and […]

Deals: Amazon Fire for $40, other Fire and Kindle devices on sale too is a post from: Liliputing

After years of problems with local and international rightsholders, leading Russian torrent site RuTracker received a serious blow last month. Following a ruling from the Moscow Court, the site was blocked by local Internet service providers.

Almost immediately the situation became more complex. In response to this aggressive action, RuTracker broke off cooperation with copyright holders who had previously been allowed to remove infringing content from the site.

“Today we put an end to these agreements, as users of the Russian Federation are now blocked from accessing our tracker. Therefore rights holders did not want to continue their cooperation, which allows us to do more and not adhere to it,” the site said in a statement.

Of course, the site still had the blocking to contend with. RuTracker had been coaching its users for months on how any blockade could be bypassed so the eventual lockout was not unexpected. However, while local copyright holders hoped their efforts would fatally damage the site’s visitor numbers, the blockade has been less effective than planned.

Stats obtained by Vedomosti reveal that two days after the blockade was put in place, visitors to RuTracker from Russia were down 33%. However, the numbers of visitors to the site from countries outside the Russian Federation increased significantly, a change consistent with people using proxies and VPNs to access the site. Overall, total visitors to the site fell by just 13%.

While the blockade certainly won’t help the site long-term, copyright holders believe it is actually proving more effective, with their claims centering around a traffic drop of around 30%. Nevertheless, they’re already standing by to deliver another blow.

According to Izvestia, record labels including Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music will now investigate ways to neutralize RuTracker’s domain. Leonid Agronov, Director General of the National Federation of Music Industry (NFMI), said his group is consulting with lawyers to decide the best course of action.

“Our lawyers will choose a way to do it that is most convenient. For example, through the courts. We’ll choose where it’s cheaper and faster,” he said.

For their part, RuTracker don’t see an attack on their domain as being successful.

“We see no reason for problems with the RuTracker.org domain, it is registered in accordance with the rules of the registrar and the domain owner information is verified and confirmed,” the site said.

But despite this confidence, efforts to attack site domains are gathering pace. An announcement on the website of the Association for the Protection of Copyright on the Internet (AZAPO) proposes amendments to Russian copyright law which would allow for the pre-trial suspension of domain names.

“AZAPO proposes…that if a site does not show its owner information, or it is not supported by its WHOIS information, rights holders should have the right to require the pre-trial blocking of the whole site, not just the pages on which there are disputed works,” the group said.

While for many Russia might seem far away, it’s certainly a battleground to watch. Initially slow out of the blocks, Russia is now increasingly quick to introduce new and aggressive anti-piracy measures. However, this enthusiasm is matched by site operators and their users who are prepared to do whatever is necessary to retain access to free content.

This battle is far from over.

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

This week anti-piracy outfit MUSO announced the launch of a new component to its portfolio of content protection solutions. Titled ‘Retune’ the package aims to enable rights holders to directly market and sell their content to piracy-engaged audiences.

In a world dominated by companies specializing in simply taking down content, shutting down sites and even suing end users, the possibility of a more creative approach to piracy issues piqued our interest. TorrentFreak caught up with MUSO to find out more.

“Retune is an automated direct-to-fan platform delivering a positive on-brand message directly from the rights owner to audience. It’s about giving fans a better, more compelling offer, right at the moment they’re engaged to seek it out via piracy networks,” Chief Commercial Officer Christopher Elkins informs TF.

But of course, getting the attention of pirates and potential pirates on their home turf can be notoriously tricky and certainly more easily said than done. So how does MUSO aim to connect with these potential customers?

“However that audience is behaving within the piracy system, via search engine results, streaming or direct download piracy websites, social media or P2P, Retune aims to engage them – using piracy as the delivery system to re-direct attention to pre-sale, previews, streaming, local listings or live events,” Elkins explains.

The company isn’t revealing everything at this stage but there are certainly opportunities to capture ‘pirate’ eyes in search results via Google ads, for example. Equally, it’s also possible to inject ads into streaming and direct download sites. Some might even be persuaded to replace links to pirate content with those pointing to official sites, a technique that has been tried before.

In any event, it appears MUSO is happy to seek attention wherever it can.

“Retune is designed to interact anywhere in that journey, from the initial specific keyword searches, and directly on piracy-focused websites, rights owner-controlled Retune pages, blogs and within message board forums directly,” Elkins says.

By treating pirates as fans more than foes, MUSO says it hopes to direct these potential customers to licensed channels such as Spotify and iTunes. Equally, its Retune platform will help rightsholders update users about new content, promotional material, and the availability of additional products such as concert tickets. Ultimately, however, rightsholders will have the choice of which direction to go.

“An incredibly exciting challenge for rights holders is in exploring how best to serve this audience at that moment of engagement, to give them a better and more compelling experience for the long-term,” the company says.

Once MUSO has the interest of these new customers it appears to want to engage them more deeply over time through what it describes as an ‘optional remarketing advertisement system’.

“The [Retune] platform allows rights owners to integrate their own 3rd party remarketing services to collect and retain cookies anonymously for future marketing possibilities,” Elkins explains.

Finally, it will come as no surprise that regular DMCA-style takedowns are part of the Retune package. MUSO not only sees these as a mechanism enabling customers to compete with piracy but also one crucial for increasing visibility of the various components within its Retune package.

“Anti-piracy has become an essential first step for any rights owner or creative individual in ensuring their content is seen and appreciated by the widest possible audience in the right way, so that they’re able to build and foster a direct relationship with that audience,” Elkins says.

“Takedowns enable rights owners to compete with and devalue the piracy market, so removing infringing content and search results is hugely important for Retune content to gain maximum exposure in supporting and complementing the rights owner’s existing websites and portals.”

More information on Retune can be found here and if readers encounter the platform in the wild, please feel free to relay your experiences.

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

(credit: Lucy Orr)

Would I like to cover Barfest? Why, of course! Even though it seems like some form of alcoholic devolution, considering I was very recently in Germany at Puke-Fest... Oh, sorry, I see—you mean BAHFest, aka the Festival of Bad ad Hoc Hypotheses. I consider myself a layperson when it comes to hard science so, in the best familial tradition, I bully my little sister—a massive nerd and PhD-holding research assistant at Birkbeck Babylab—to assist me in ascertaining how any data might be mishandled. By design, there’s bound to be some bad science here.

I've attended my fair share of Uncaged Monkeys shows, and love a good Carl Sagan quote, so I feel privileged to be attending the very first international BAHFest. It's billed as “a celebration of well-argued, and thoroughly researched, but completely incorrect scientific theory.” The festival is running over two days at Imperial College London, where my famous-not-famous particle physicist dad, Robert Orr, studied in the 1960s. I can’t help wondering if I was conceived in a lab nearby.

On the first evening, dubbed BAH! London Evolution, six brave speakers (assisted by inexplicably popular Hogwarts' escapee, and AV technician, Lloyd) present their awfully absorbing, and utterly loony theories to a live audience of hollering nerds, and a panel of three judges, some of whom might even have valid science credentials.

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A modern human and Neanderthal skull face off. (credit: By hairymuseummatt (original photo), DrMikeBaxter (derivative work) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

For a long time, archaeologists have suggested that modern humans wiped out Neanderthals because we had greater technological and cultural development, which allowed us to find and exploit resources more readily than Neanderthals did. It’s a plausible explanation, but it leaves us with pressing questions about the details of how this might have happened.

For a start, we know that Neanderthals had some culture, so exactly how much more would modern humans have needed to have in order to be more competitive? And modern humans entered Neanderthal territory in smaller numbers than the established Neanderthal population—could technology make up for what they lacked in numbers?

These questions highlight a major challenge with this model: there are other plausible explanations for the disappearance of Neanderthals. For example, they could have been wiped out by climate change or an epidemic.

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