Solar Impulse leaves New York, heads for Spain

Two-thirds of the way around the planet, and still going.

Moving the plane was a manual affair, and it was rolled sideways rather than forward. (credit: John Timmer)

Early Monday morning, Solar Impulse 2 left John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on its attempt to cross the Atlantic as part of its 'round-the-world flight. The solar-powered craft is expected to take four days to make its way to Seville, Spain. This leg features Bertrand Piccard at the controls after fellow pilot André Borschberg brought the craft into New York.

As of noon Eastern Standard Time, the craft was eight percent of the way through its journey, which will take it northeast along the US and Canadian coasts to Newfoundland, after which it will turn southeast to head more directly to Spain. After starting the flight on battery power, the craft has largely recharged its batteries as it continues to climb above a kilometer in altitude.

Progress of the flight can be monitored at the Solar Impulse website.

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UEFA Cracks Down on ‘Pirate’ Euro Cup Streams

Now that the Euro Cup is well underway, UEFA and its partners have started cracking down on the many unauthorized streams that are being broadcasted online. Despite their efforts, it seems to be a game that they can’t possibly win.

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

uefa2016logoWith a daily audience of tens of millions of people, the 2016 UEFA Euro Cup in France is one of the largest sporting events of the year.

While football is considered to be a game of the people, UEFA is carefully controlling who can watch what, when and where.

One of the thorns in the side of the football organization and its rightsholders are unauthorized live streams. These streams have become quite common, and offer people a chance to follow the various matches without having to pay for a subscription.

Over the past week UEFA and its partners have targeted several sites offering such streams. They includes several Google Blogspot blogs that are specifically setup to stream sports events.

TorrentFreak has checked several UEFA notices that were addressed to Blogspot and found that none of the pages were taken down. However, the live feeds on these sites are no longer available, which means that there is no infringing activity either.

uefablogspot

This also signals one of the problems sports broadcasters often have to deal with. Due to the live nature of their “works” the actual takedowns have to be pretty much instant. After all, when a match has ended it’s already too late.

Some UEFA Euro Cup rightsholders have tried to address this by sending advance notices to various sites. However, for site owners it is hard to take something down that doesn’t yet exists.

Various torrent sites therefore refused to take pre-preemptive action, and Google hasn’t responded yet to a similar pre-piracy request.

In addition to various specialized live streaming portals, the UEFA Euro Cup and other events are also more frequently shared on social media. Apps such as Periscope make is very easy for people to stream and watch these events and despite the horrible quality, some get hundreds or thousands of views.

UEFA has previously gone after Periscope streams of other events and some recent Euro Cup streams have disappeared as well, suggesting that the football organization is keeping a close eye on these social streams too.

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

10 million-core supercomputer hits 93 petaflop/s, tripling speed record

There’s a new world’s fastest supercomputer for the first time in three years.

The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China. (credit: Top500.org)

A Chinese supercomputer called Sunway TaihuLight now ranks as the world's fastest, nearly tripling the previous supercomputer speed record with a rating of 93 petaflops per second. That's 93 quadrillion floating point operations per second (or 93 million billion).

Sunway TaihuLight surpassed another Chinese supercomputer, Tianhe-2, which had been the world's fastest for three consecutive years with speeds of 33.9 petaflop/s, according to the latest Top500.org ranking released today. Top500 rankings are based on the Linpack benchmark, which requires each cluster "to solve a dense system of linear equations."

"Sunway TaihuLight, with 10,649,600 computing cores comprising 40,960 nodes, is twice as fast and three times as efficient as Tianhe-2," the Top500 announcement said. Sunway TaihuLight is one of the world's most efficient systems, with "peak power consumption under load (running the HPL benchmark)... at 15.37MW, or 6 Gflops/Watt."

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Streaming: Twitch geht gegen gefälschte Zuschauer vor

Wer Spiele-Streams oder sonstige Sendungen auf Twitch sieht, muss ein echter Mensch sein – bei vielen Zuschauern handelt es sich jedoch stattdessen um Bots. Jetzt hat Twitch Klage gegen mehrere Anbieter von View- und Follow-Bots eingereicht. (Twitch, A…

Wer Spiele-Streams oder sonstige Sendungen auf Twitch sieht, muss ein echter Mensch sein - bei vielen Zuschauern handelt es sich jedoch stattdessen um Bots. Jetzt hat Twitch Klage gegen mehrere Anbieter von View- und Follow-Bots eingereicht. (Twitch, Amazon)

Huawei Matebook launches in the US July 11th for $699 and up

Huawei Matebook launches in the US July 11th for $699 and up

The Huawei Matebook is a 12 inch Windows tablet with a high-resolution display, an Intel Core M Skylake processor, and support for an optional keyboard cover and an optional digital pen.

First unveiled in February, Huawei has now announced that the Matebook is coming to America starting July 11th.

It’ll be available from the Microsoft Store for $699 and up… with an emphasis on up if you want all the available bells and whistles.

Continue reading Huawei Matebook launches in the US July 11th for $699 and up at Liliputing.

Huawei Matebook launches in the US July 11th for $699 and up

The Huawei Matebook is a 12 inch Windows tablet with a high-resolution display, an Intel Core M Skylake processor, and support for an optional keyboard cover and an optional digital pen.

First unveiled in February, Huawei has now announced that the Matebook is coming to America starting July 11th.

It’ll be available from the Microsoft Store for $699 and up… with an emphasis on up if you want all the available bells and whistles.

Continue reading Huawei Matebook launches in the US July 11th for $699 and up at Liliputing.

Fairphone 2 gets a little more fair thanks to conflict-free minerals

Some smartphone shoppers are looking for phones with the best possible specs, a software experience that meets their needs, or an attractive price point. But there are at least some people interested in a phone that puts ethical considerations front an…

Fairphone 2 gets a little more fair thanks to conflict-free minerals

Some smartphone shoppers are looking for phones with the best possible specs, a software experience that meets their needs, or an attractive price point. But there are at least some people interested in a phone that puts ethical considerations front and center.

The Fairphone 2 is easy to take apart and repair, in order to let you hold onto your phone for longer. A portion of the sales price goes to a worker welfare fund that helps the people who actually manufacture the device.

Continue reading Fairphone 2 gets a little more fair thanks to conflict-free minerals at Liliputing.

Trademark dispute with Sky broadcasting sought name change for No Man’s Sky

Dispute ends after “three years of secret stupid legal nonsense.”

Did you think that the highly anticipated, procedurally generated space exploration game No Man's Sky was in any way related to British telecommunications and broadcasting giant Sky? Of course you didn't. But it apparently took the legal system three years to come to the same conclusion.

That's according to Sean Murray, managing director of No Man's Sky maker Hello Games. Over the weekend, Murray tweeted that the company had settled a legal dispute with Sky over the game's name after "3 years of secret stupid legal nonsense." In a follow-up tweet, he added that "this is the same folks who made Microsoft change Skydrive to Onedrive... so it was pretty serious." ("On the plus side perhaps this is the real reason Skynet never happened..." he joked)

Sky did indeed go after Microsoft's Skydrive back in 2014, forcing an abrupt name change from the massive company. Last year, Sky also took legal action against Microsoft's Skype, arguing that the service's logo looked like a cloud "and thus may readily be associated with the word 'sky.'" A European court eventually agreed with that argument.

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ÖBB: Huawei liefert Glasfasernetz für Bundesbahn nach Österreich

Ein DWDM-Glasfasernetz liefert Huawei für die Österreichischen Bundesbahnen. Es ist für interne Kommunikation, aber auch für WLAN auf Bahnhöfen und die Mobilfunkversorgung in den Zügen wichtig. (Glasfaser, WLAN)

Ein DWDM-Glasfasernetz liefert Huawei für die Österreichischen Bundesbahnen. Es ist für interne Kommunikation, aber auch für WLAN auf Bahnhöfen und die Mobilfunkversorgung in den Zügen wichtig. (Glasfaser, WLAN)

Deep Mind: Googles KI wird durch Trial-and-Error besser als Menschen

Das Deep-Mind-Team von Google kombiniert das Lernen durch Trial-and-Error mit neuronalen Netzen und erreicht damit übermenschliche Fähigkeiten in Go- oder Atari-Spielen. Google will dies künftig auch für Veränderungen in der Gesellschaft nutzen. (Deep Learning, Google)

Das Deep-Mind-Team von Google kombiniert das Lernen durch Trial-and-Error mit neuronalen Netzen und erreicht damit übermenschliche Fähigkeiten in Go- oder Atari-Spielen. Google will dies künftig auch für Veränderungen in der Gesellschaft nutzen. (Deep Learning, Google)