Category: Uncategorised

Iranische Spielefans dürfen nicht nach Pikachu, Schlurp und anderen Monstern in Pokémon Go suchen - die Sicherheitsbehörden haben die weltweit erfolgreiche App verboten. (Pokémon Go, Nintendo)

Leckere kostenlose Häppchen, Massagen und viel Platz: Wer mit einem Economy-Ticket unterwegs ist, kann sich mit ein paar Programmierkenntnissen trotzdem Zugang zur Lounge der höheren Klassen verschaffen. Ein polnischer Computerexperte hat es ausprobiert. (Security, Internet)

Mit Chris Urmson verliert Google seinen technischen Projektleiter für autonome Autos. Auch zwei weitere Top-Mitarbeiter aus der Sparte sollen das Unternehmen verlassen haben. Google könnte das Projekt bald in ein eigenes Unternehmen überführen. (Google X, Google)

For closing on 20 years, online piracy has been the bane of the music industry. Starting off relatively small due to limited speed Internet connections, the phenomenon boomed as broadband took hold.

In the years that followed, countless millions of tracks were shared among like-minded Internet users eager to keep up with their favorite artists and to discover those they never knew existed.

But with 2016 almost two-thirds done, legal music availability has never been better and the excuses for obtaining all content illegally are slowly disappearing over the horizon, for those who can afford it at least.

Nevertheless, one type of piracy refuses to go away, no matter how well-off the consumer. By definition, pre-release music is officially unavailable to buy, so money is completely out of the equation. Such leaks are the ultimate forbidden fruit for hardcore fans of all standing, including those most likely to shell out for the real thing.

This means that the major labels regularly cite pre-release leaks as the most damaging form of piracy, as they are unable to compete with the unauthorized copies already available. Release plans and marketing drives are planned and paid for in advance, and record companies are reluctant to change them.

As a result, such leaks are often followed by extreme outbursts from labels which slam leakers and downloaders alike. That’s perhaps understandable but there are better ways of getting the message over without attacking fans. Last week, drum and bass, dubstep, breakbeat and house stars Noisia showed how it should be done after their long-awaited album Outer Edges leaked online six weeks early.

“Friday night, while we were in the final minutes of setting up the stage for our first ever Outer Edges show, we received the news that our album had been leaked. We think you can imagine how bad we felt at that moment,” the trio told fans on Facebook.

“We realize it’s 2016, and things like these happen all the time. Still, it’s quite a setback. All the plans we’ve made have to be scrapped and replaced by something less ideal, because we have to react to this unfortunate situation.”

In the DnB scene Noisia are absolutely huge but despite their success have chosen to stay close to their fans. The trio run their own label (Vision Recordings) so have more control than many artists, thus allowing them to give fans unprecedented access to their music.

“So far in releasing this album, we’ve made a conscious effort to make every track that’s available somewhere, available everywhere. If you pre-ordered the album on Itunes or our webstore, you received the new track the same day it was first premiered on Soundcloud,” Noisia continue.

“We believe that users of all platforms should be able to listen to our music pretty much the minute it’s available anywhere else. In this philosophy, the availability of our whole album on illegal download sites means that we have to make it available on all platforms.”

So, instead of going off on a huge rant, Noisia leapt into action.

“We have immediately changed all our previous plans and made the whole album available to buy on our web store right now,” the band announced on the day of the leak.

Sadly, other digital platforms couldn’t move as quickly, so most only got the release on Friday. Physical products couldn’t be moved either due to production limitations, so they will appear on the original schedule.

“Even though we are unhappy about this leak, we’re still really happy with the music. We really hope you will enjoy it as much as we’ve enjoyed making it,” Noisia said.

With this reaction to what must’ve been a hugely disappointing leak, Noisia showed themselves to be professionals. No crying, no finger pointing, just actions to limit the impact of the situation alongside a decision to compete with free, both before and after the leak.

Nevertheless, Thijs, Martijn and Nik are human after all, so they couldn’t resist taking a little shot at whoever leaked their music. No threats of lawsuits of course, but a decent helping of sarcasm and dark humor.

“Thanks to whoever leaked our album, next time please do it after the album is out, maybe we can coordinate? Oh wait, that wouldn’t really be leaking… And besides, we don’t negotiate with terror..leaking persons,” they said.

“No, instead we will fold, and adjust our entire strategy. Take that! We hope you get stung by a lot of mosquitoes this summer, and maybe also next summer.”

Noisia’s next album will probably take years to arrive (Outer Edges took six years) but when it does, don’t expect to be warned months in advance. The trio are already vowing to do things differently next time, so expect the unexpected.

Noisia make a lot of their music available for free on Soundcloud, YouTube and ad-supported Spotify.

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

Ein "Alptraum für alle, die überwachen und zensieren" wollen, soll Megaupload 2.0 werden - sagt Kim Dotcom. Der Filesharing-Dienst soll im Januar 2017 mit Unterstützung für mehrere Plattformen und White-Label-Lösungen den Betrieb aufnehmen. (Kim Schmitz, Cloud Computing)

Der Raspberry Pi 3 kann zukünftig auch ein Betriebssystem von einem angesteckten USB-Massenspeicher und über das Netzwerk starten. Allerdings wird nicht jedes USB-Speichergerät unterstützt. (Raspberry Pi, Debian)

Following the demise of KickassTorrents, another major torrent site has shut down, this time without warning or explanation. After 13 years of operation, torrent mega-search engine Torrentz has apparently closed up shop, without providing any explanations.

Unlike torrent search sites like The Pirate Bay, Torrentz is a meta-search engine, which means it doesn't actually host any torrent files, but rather, allows users to search multiple torrent sites at the same time. This made Torrentz more like Google than say KickassTorrents, but did not help the site avoid being targeted by copyright holders, who have repeatedly made references to site as one of the worst piracy offenders.

But just a few days ago, visitors to Torrentz found that, despite the home page appearing as it was before (other than the welcoming message referring to the site in the past tense), all of the site's functionality stopped working. When users made a search, they are met with a new message which simply states: "Torrentz will always love you. Farewell."

An operator of the site contacted TorrentFreak but provided no information as to why the site was shut down.

It is unknown yet whether copyright enforcement actions played a role in the demise of Torrentz, but it cannot be ruled out at the moment,.

[via TorrentFreak]

Für 200 Millionen US-Dollar hat Apple offenbar das Start-up Turi aus Seattle gekauft. Es hat sich auf künstliche Intelligenz und Maschinenlernen spezialisiert. (Apple, KI)

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Last month KickassTorrents (KAT) was shut down by the U.S. Government, following the arrest of the site’s alleged owner.

Soon after the official site went offline various mirrors and copies launched to take its place, attracting hundreds of thousands of users.

One of the most popular mirrors started as KAT.am. The site was featured in several news reports with some suggesting that it’s an official reincarnation of KAT.

While the site has nothing to do with the original site, Hollywood was not happy, which resulted in a swift domain suspension. However, at the time of writing, the site continues to operate from the kickass.cd and kickass.mx domain names.

Those who visit the site will notice that it does indeed look a lot like the original KAT site. However, upon closer inspection is doesn’t even appear to be a mirror. Not of KAT at least.

Instead, the site is merely serving content from another well-known torrent site, The Pirate Bay.

This is best illustrated by comparing searches on both sites. Without exception, these return the exact same results in the same order, with the same numbers of seeds and peers.

For example, a search for “TPB AFK” returns 64 results on the Kickass.mx “mirror,” with the uploads from “SimonKlose” and MVGroup listed on top. These are all torrents that were originally added years ago.

The same search on The Pirate Bay returns identical results, without exception. Even the upload timestamps are exactly the same as on the KAT “mirror”.

As if that’s not enough, the recent torrents listings also show the same torrents, uploaded by the same usernames.

Of course, there is no recent KAT content to mirror, so the site has to use an external source for these. However, as far as we can see, all torrents on the site are being pulled from TPB, not KAT.

For comparison, a search for “TPB AFK” on a real KAT mirror shows a widget with movie details, which KAT had in place, as well as entirely different torrents uploaded by different users.

The screenshot below is taken from the Kickasstorrents.to mirror, which is a true mirror and doesn’t have any recent torrents.

With the above in mind it’s clear that the operators of the Kickass.mx and Kickass.cd mirrors are not being entirely truthful, as they are no longer relying on a database of KAT torrents as previously claimed.

It could be that they started out this way, but at the moment it’s little more than a dressed-up TPB mirror.

These type of misleading claims are not new of course. The same happened when YIFY disappeared last year. With millions of estranged users it can be quite lucrative to “hijack” a popular brand such as KAT.

In any case, former KAT users should be aware that not everything they see on the Internet is what they believe it is, but I guess that’s no surprise by now.

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