Orange Pi Lite: Preis- und Größenkampf der Bastelcomputer

Wohl als Reaktion auf den Chip und den Raspberry Pi Zero wurden zwei neue Orange-Pi-Modelle angekündigt. Obwohl als Sparmodelle gedacht, muss der Anwender nicht auf diverse Anschlüsse verzichten. (Raspberry Pi, Prozessor)

Wohl als Reaktion auf den Chip und den Raspberry Pi Zero wurden zwei neue Orange-Pi-Modelle angekündigt. Obwohl als Sparmodelle gedacht, muss der Anwender nicht auf diverse Anschlüsse verzichten. (Raspberry Pi, Prozessor)

Slightly creepy experiment with ants shows that drugs can permanently alter behavior

Scientists turned guard ants into scout ants with one brain injection.

(credit: Alex Wild)

Carpenter ants live in a caste system, where some members of the colony grow into large, strong worker guards known as majors and others grow into small, inquisitive food scouts known as minors. Scientists have long been fascinated by how majors and minors come to be. Though the two castes share the exact same genomes (and parents), they look and behave in dramatically different ways. Clearly, these differences must be epigenetic, or triggered by environmental factors that take hold after the ants are born. Now a group of researchers have shown that just one dose of a specific enzyme, injected into a recently-hatched major's brain, can mess with the ant's epigenome for months.

Many studies have shown that social insects like bees create their biological castes with food. Queen bees, for example, are made by feeding royal jelly to a larva. Speculating that a similar mechanism might be at work in carpenter ants, University of Pennsylvania developmental biologist Daniel Simola and his colleagues attempted to isolate a substance they could feed to ants that might cause one caste to transform into another. Specifically, they wanted to see whether they could induce a major worker to act like a minor worker, abandoning her job as guard to become a forager. They focused specifically on enzymes that affect 160 genes whose activity diverged the most between minors and majors. Those genes included ones associated with learning, memory, and the way neurons communicate with each other in the brain.

In this video, the researchers explain how the ant caste system works.


Eventually, Simola and his colleagues found just a few enzymes that regulated the behavior of those genes. After several experiments with feeding the substance to their insect subjects, the researchers figured out how to inject the enzymes into the brains of major workers shortly after hatching. The treatment made the ants take on new social roles immediately. Those major workers looked big and powerful like their unmodified major sisters, but they acted like minors, exploring and foraging for food. In a paper published today in Science, Simola and his co-authors explain that they observed the modified majors acting like minors for up to 50 days after hatching. Carpenter ant workers can live up to 7 years, so it's not clear whether this alteration in the insects' behavior would last their whole lives.

The modification ultimately depended on changing the behavior of one particular gene, Rpd3, which set off a cascade effect that changed the behavior of other genes too.

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Jolla to crowdfunding backers: Not everyone will get a tablet

Jolla to crowdfunding backers: Not everyone will get a tablet

Finnish mobile company Jolla had a rough year in 2015, and the company decided to stop producing its own hardware in order to focus on its Sailfish OS software. But what about folks who’ve already given the company money to buy hardware that hasn’t been delivered? After launching a smartphone in 2013, Jolla launched a […]

Jolla to crowdfunding backers: Not everyone will get a tablet is a post from: Liliputing

Jolla to crowdfunding backers: Not everyone will get a tablet

Finnish mobile company Jolla had a rough year in 2015, and the company decided to stop producing its own hardware in order to focus on its Sailfish OS software. But what about folks who’ve already given the company money to buy hardware that hasn’t been delivered? After launching a smartphone in 2013, Jolla launched a […]

Jolla to crowdfunding backers: Not everyone will get a tablet is a post from: Liliputing

Ars Cardboard: Our top 2015 board games

From La Granja to Codenames, here are the games that hit our tables most this year.

(credit: orangebrompton)

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.

What do we do on the Ars Orbiting HQ to while away the lonely holiday hours? Play board games, of course. And the last 18 months were high-water marks for the hobby, throwing out innovative, beautiful titles on a near-monthly basis.

Here, we've rounded up a few of our favorites from 2015 (with a few late 2014 titles sneaking in for good measure). These are the new games that we most enjoyed this year—and we hope you'll find something new to try, too.

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Super Nintendo: Konsole 20 Jahre lang zum Spielstand sichern eingeschaltet

Das dürfte ein Rekord der ganz seltenen Art sein: Um den Verlust eines Savegames zu verhindern, hat ein japanischer Spieler rund 20 Jahre lang seine Nintendo-Konsole laufen lassen – bis auf einen kurzen, offenbar unvermeidbaren Augenblick. (Games, Nintendo)

Das dürfte ein Rekord der ganz seltenen Art sein: Um den Verlust eines Savegames zu verhindern, hat ein japanischer Spieler rund 20 Jahre lang seine Nintendo-Konsole laufen lassen - bis auf einen kurzen, offenbar unvermeidbaren Augenblick. (Games, Nintendo)

Betriebssystem: Quellcode von AmigaOS geleakt

Der Quellcode einer einigermaßen aktuellen Version von AmigaOS ist offenbar im Netz aufgetaucht – inklusive des Betriebssystemkerns Kickstart und des Dateimanagers Workbench. (AmigaOS, Betriebssystem)

Der Quellcode einer einigermaßen aktuellen Version von AmigaOS ist offenbar im Netz aufgetaucht - inklusive des Betriebssystemkerns Kickstart und des Dateimanagers Workbench. (AmigaOS, Betriebssystem)

Four Persistent Online Piracy Misconceptions Busted

While regular visitors to these pages are probably extremely tuned into the way the file-sharing world operates, more casual readers may have one or two things they’d like clearing up. Here are four of the most common and persistent piracy-related misconceptions of recent years, busted for your convenience.

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

uploadFifteen years ago, online peer-to-peer file-sharing was a fairly straightforward process. One simply downloaded a file-sharing client such as Kazaa, searched for whatever tickled one’s fancy, and waited for the file to transfer.

While it was undoubtedly easy, slick it was not. ‘Shared folder’ type applications like Kazaa and LimeWire were slow, clumsy and a haven for fake files and junk. No wonder people got excited when BitTorrent came along a few years later.

Today, people getting into the P2P file-sharing scene experience an altogether different dynamic. In some ways it’s more difficult to get going from a standing start, but for those prepared to handle an initially steep learning curve the rewards are potentially much greater.

However, with great ‘rewards’ come great responsibilities, especially when it comes to sharing copyrighted content without permission. As a result there are many misconceptions about what is and isn’t legal and how people are ‘caught’ (and by whom) when using tools such as BitTorrent online.

I never ‘seed’ so I’m never going to get caught

For the vast majority of users, seeding is the act of sharing content they have already downloaded. So, when a movie has downloaded and clicks from 99% to 100% complete, their BitTorrent software starts sharing that entire copy with the world.

However, many users believe that if they stop their software before it starts seeding, that means they cannot be tracked by anti-piracy companies. Unfortunately for them, that is completely untrue.

Any user in a BitTorrent ‘swarm’ has the potential to be tracked, often within seconds and certainly within minutes of beginning their download. This is because unless there are special circumstances, all users are also automatically sharing the content they’re downloading with others.

Once that user’s IP address has been logged by an anti-piracy company, few give a damn whether the user is sharing 100% or 0.1% of a movie. While the time spent in a swarm increases the chances of being monitored, for anti-piracy companies participation is guilt – period.

I own the original DVD/CD so I can download a copy completely legally

So you went into the city and picked up a copy of Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation and helped to push the movie to the top of the Blu-ray charts. Then, having enjoyed it so much, you bought the soundtrack on CD from Amazon. Pat yourself on the back – you’re a paid-up member of the legitimate purchase club.

With that accolade under your belt, it must then follow that you can download backup copies from BitTorrent in case of scratches etc, right?

Err, no. Absolutely not.

Buying an original copy of a movie or CD provides the purchaser with a license to use that content in a certain fashion, usually including viewing/listening at home in front of a limited number of people. What that license definitely does not provide is permission to mass distribute that content to anyone else.

As noted above in the ‘seeding myth’ section, anyone downloading content from BitTorrent is almost always distributing (or uploading) the same content to other users in the same swarm. The act of uploading is illegal in most countries.

Put plainly, anti-piracy companies couldn’t give a damn whether uploaders own none, one, or a million copies of the content in question. Unauthorized mass distribution is illegal, period.

How can I stop my ISP from spying on me?

During the past several years many hundreds of thousands of file-sharers have received letters or emails advising them that they’ve been monitored sharing copyrighted content without permission. As detailed above, many participated in BitTorrent swarms and had their IP addresses logged.

However, since the correspondence they initially receive usually comes from their Internet service provider (Comcast in the US, or Sky in the UK, for example), people believe that their ISP has been spying on them. That is simply not true.

In all ordinary circumstances, especially involving file-sharers, ISPs have no interest in monitoring their users. Not only would this present a legal minefield for service providers, doing so would also represent a logistical nightmare.

To be clear, anti-piracy companies monitor pirates and, broadly speaking, ISPs would rather not know what their users are doing. Some like to throttle (slow down) BitTorrent users but their interest generally ends there.

I only need to use a VPN to avoid being traced

There can be little doubt that buying a decent VPN from a reputable company is one of the best things anyone can do to protect their online privacy. However, people should be aware that this is only one aspect of remaining anonymous and it does not allow them to act with impunity.

Very often it is not merely how people connect to the Internet (unprotected IP address) that causes them to breach their security, but what they say and do once they’re online. For anyone interested in reading more about how poor Internet hygiene can drive a bus and several trucks through VPN security, please refer to our earlier article detailing how the UK’s most prolific pirates were caught.

In summary, VPNs are great (some might argue ‘essential’) for maintaining privacy online and their use alone will stop casual monitors from tracking the user. However, for those taking the bigger risks, VPNs and similar technology only help when sheer carelessness is taken out of the equation.

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

Oculus Rift: Eingabegerät Touch kommt später

Die Entwicklung der Endkundenversion von Oculus Rift ist abgeschlossen, aber beim Eingabegerät Touch kommt es zu einer Verzögerung: Spieler werden bis zur zweiten Hälfte 2016 mit anderen Controllern wie dem Xbox-Gamepad vorliebnehmen müssen. (Oculus Rift, Eingabegerät)

Die Entwicklung der Endkundenversion von Oculus Rift ist abgeschlossen, aber beim Eingabegerät Touch kommt es zu einer Verzögerung: Spieler werden bis zur zweiten Hälfte 2016 mit anderen Controllern wie dem Xbox-Gamepad vorliebnehmen müssen. (Oculus Rift, Eingabegerät)

Internet: Beim Breitbandausbau bleibt noch viel zu tun

Hamburg und Berlin stehen beim Ausbau mit Breitband-Internet gut da, in Sachsen-Anhalt können nicht einmal 41 Prozent der Haushalte schnell surfen. Ein Problem für Firmen ist die ungleiche Verteilung der Kabelfernsehnetze. (Breitband, Kabelnetz)

Hamburg und Berlin stehen beim Ausbau mit Breitband-Internet gut da, in Sachsen-Anhalt können nicht einmal 41 Prozent der Haushalte schnell surfen. Ein Problem für Firmen ist die ungleiche Verteilung der Kabelfernsehnetze. (Breitband, Kabelnetz)

Leistungsschutzrecht: Warten auf Oettingers Hauptgericht

Ein einheitliches europäisches Urheberrecht wäre eine gute Sache. Die möglichen Pläne der EU-Kommission könnten aber einen großen Nachteil haben. (Leistungsschutzrecht, Urheberrecht)

Ein einheitliches europäisches Urheberrecht wäre eine gute Sache. Die möglichen Pläne der EU-Kommission könnten aber einen großen Nachteil haben. (Leistungsschutzrecht, Urheberrecht)