Telecoms regulator Ofcom has just published a study into the state of online copyright infringement in the UK, with some very interesting conclusions. The researchers found that 10% of the country’;s most prolific infringers are responsible for almost 80% of all infringements carried out online, but with a bonus. These plus an additional 10% of infringers spend 300% more than ‘honest’ consumers who don’t infringe copyright at all — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Yesterday the torrent world lit up with news that Demonoid had somehow been resurrected under the new domain D2.vu. However, the site was quickly taken offline by its host in the US who claimed that it was serving up malware. With the site now back online with a new host, TorrentFreak caught up with its admins who tell us they have no malicious intent and simply want to bring a community back to together. While there is still uncertainty, one thing is absolutely clear — they do have the old Demonoid database — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Romain Jacquet-Lagreze’s Vertical Horizon
series is a photo essay — and book — exploring the rapid vertical expansion of one of the densest cities in the world. While images of Hong Kong’s skyline are common enough, Jacquet-Lagreze’s almost abstract photos of the city’s buildings, taken from an unerringly vertical, worm’s eye perspective, show an oppressive man-made environment — notably devoid of actual humans—that easily crowds the view of the camera lens, leaving only a small patch of sky visible in the middle of each composition — via Architizer
Staff at Nordens Ark in Sweden finally got a glimpse of their newest residents, three Wolverine pups. The pups, born on 21 February, recently emerged from their mother’s den; where they spent the first six weeks of their lives completely dependent on their mother — via ZooBorns
BCX Kraken Unleashed — via Base Camp X
My brother Danny lost his virginity at age 25. To a call girl named Monique. Hired by our mother.
My mother didn’t bother asking Danny for his permission before engaging Monique’s services. She didn’t ask my father to condone the transaction. Nor was she troubled by social mores or laws against solicitation. She deserves a Mother of the Year Award.
There was a reason for my mother’s taboo-busting parenting. Danny was born with a rare, incurable genetic disease that affects the development and function of the nervous system. The typical lifespan for children born with Familial Dysautonomia was then about five years. My mother rolled up her sleeves, strapped on her stilettos, and ignored the statistic. A parent now myself, I wonder if I have half my mother’s grit and grace — via redwolf.newsvine.com
On a normal weeknight, Netflix accounts for almost a third of all Internet traffic entering North American homes. That’s more than YouTube, Hulu, Amazon.com, HBO Go, iTunes, and BitTorrent combined. Traffic to Netflix usually peaks at around 10.00pm in each time zone, at which point a chart of Internet consumption looks like a python that swallowed a cow. By midnight Pacific time, streaming volume falls off dramatically.
As prime time wound down on 31 January, though, there was an unusual amount of tension at Netflix. That was the night the company premièred House of Cards, its political thriller set in Washington. Before midnight about 40 engineers gathered in a conference room at Netflix’s headquarters. They sat before a collection of wall-mounted monitors that displayed the status of Netflix’s computing systems. On the conference table, a few dozen laptops, tablets, smartphones, and other devices had the Netflix app loaded and ready to stream.
When the clocks hit 12.00am, the entire season of House of Cards started appearing on the devices, as well as in the recommendation lists of millions of customers chosen by an algorithm. The opening scene, a dog getting run over by an SUV, came and went. At 12.15am, around the time Kevin Spacey’s character says I’m livid,
everything was working fine. That’s when the champagne comes,
says Yury Izrailevsky, the vice president in charge of cloud computing at Netflix, which has a history of self-inflicted catastrophes. Izrailevsky stayed until the wee hours of the morning—just in case—as thousands of customers binge-watched the show. The midnight ritual repeated itself on 19 April, when Netflix premièred its werewolf horror series Hemlock Grove, and will again on 26 May, when its revival of Arrested Development goes live — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Death by Skottie Young — via Neil Gaiman
This is a very simple FLORA project with no soldering — a single NeoPixel lights up on an embroidered angler fish on a pair of shorts. The main board is stitched on the front of the design, in the belly of the fish. A snap is used on the fin as a digital switch, triggering a colour change in the pixel in the angler’s lure. Follow the circuit diagram to stitch up this circuit, and tuck the battery in the pocket — via Adafruit Learning System
During the past few weeks the US Ambassador to Australia has courted controversy with his opinions of those who download Game of Thrones without paying. Now it’s been revealed that he has more than just a passing interesting in copyright infringement.
Last month US Ambassador Jeffrey L Bleich kicked up a storm when he jumped aboard the Game of Thrones downloading controversy. He singled-out citizens in Australia and appealed to them to stop stealing
the show.
Then just a few days later Bleich was back, responding to criticisms from people who felt that an ambassador should have better things to do than worry about a bit of downloading.
Actually, given the overwhelming response to the topic, maybe I haven’t talked about internet piracy enough,
he said at the start of a second lengthy Facebook posting on the issue.
Now, thanks to News.com.au, we have a clearer idea why Bleich might have such a keen interest in the issue of illegal downloading — via redwolf.newsvine.com
American graphic designer and filmmaker, Saul Bass, has been given a video Google Doodle to mark what would have been his 93rd birthday.
Bass was best known for his cinema title sequences and movie posters, working with such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. The video showcases some of his best work from a prolific Hollywood career which spanned five decades.
He designed the title sequences for Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960), and his work also included Spartacus (1960), West Side Story (1961), The Shining (1980), Goodfellas (1990),Cape Fear (1991) and Casino (1995) — via redwolf.newsvine.com
I started drawing in my Walls Notebook. I had to cut off the back half of the picture (wouldn’t fit in my scanner). It’s okay though. It wasn’t much more than a few legs from the tentacled monster and the front guys left dr seuss hand, hehe. Photography by: Sherwood Forlee — via deviantART
Nudibranchs, also known as sea slugs, are small brightly coloured animals that come in endless variations. This pendant is modelled after the hermissenda crassicornis species. This is made from translucent polymer clay and has orange spikes tipped with tiny flecks of white clay, a subtly blue tinted body, and the distinctive yellow stripe down it’s centre — via Etsy
Supercomputer maker Cray had been hinting that it would deliver a new cut-down version of its Cascade
XC30 system, and the machine is being unveiled on Tuesday at the Cray User Group meeting in Napa Valley, California.
The XC30-AC machines go into more standard cabinets like those used with the XE5 and XE6 predecessors to the Cascade boxes, but are based on the same Intel Xeon E5 processors and Aries
Dragonfly interconnect that the larger XC30-LC machines that were announced last November. The LC is short for liquid-cooled, and you will recall that the big bad Cascade boxes had liquid cooling in the racks and an interesting transverse cooling
system — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Visual effects master Ray Harryhausen, whose stop-motion wizardry graced such films as Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, has died aged 92.
The American made his models by hand and painstakingly shot them frame by frame to create some of the best-known animated sequences in cinema.
His death in London was confirmed to the BBC by a family representative.
“Harryhausen’s genius was in being able to bring his models alive,” said an official statement from his foundation.
Whether they were prehistoric dinosaurs or mythological creatures, in Ray’s hands they were no longer puppets but became instead characters in their own right
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
An iconic design that evokes memories from childhood. These brightly coloured space invaders cheer up any interior space — via Bouf
The Clouded Leopard cubs born at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute-Front Royal recently turned 2 months old, which means they’re big enough to have access to a larger enclosure with big climbing structures. Keepers report that the cubs spend most of their time playing and like to climb as high as they can! They’ve also mastered eating solid foods and are steadily gaining weight. The male weighs just over 4.5 pounds, and the female weighs about 3.5 pounds — via ZooBorns
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