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The same groups that brought down SOPA seem to be turning their attention to the recent Goliath news. On the heels of Google's lawsuit against the Mississippi attorney general, a coalition of thirteen advocacy groups has turned its attention to the recent actions against Google, and is issuing a letter criticizing Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood's role in the MPAA program known as Project Goliath. Hood has already called for a "time out" in the ongoing legal battle, but judging by the letter, many web freedom groups are unimpressed.

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BBC News: Singer Joe Cocker, best known for his cover of the Beatles' "With A Little Help From My Friends," has died aged 70. 

The singer song-writer from Sheffield had a career lasting more than 40 years with hits including "You Are So Beautiful" and "Up Where We Belong."

 Google is now displaying music lyrics at the top of its search results pages when you search for “song name” plus “lyrics” on Google – a move that may reduce the number of visits to music lyrics sites that now rank highly in Google Search, like azlyrics.com or songlyrics.com, for example. The move follows a change that Microsoft’s Bing made earlier this… Read More

WikiLeaks has published a pair of internal CIA documents briefing undercover agents on how to dupe security at airports. The two documents — both classified as "Secret/NOFORN" meaning not to be shared with allied security agencies — give spies advice on how to maintain their cover. They also provide a detailed overview of the covert tactics airports use to vet travelers.

TOP CIA ADVICE: If you're a spy, try not to look nervous

Although some of the information in the documents is public knowledge, advice on how to avoid being singled out for secondary screening could be useful to a variety of people. These include tourists and travelers trying to get home for the holidays, but also terrorists, drug traffickers, and common criminals. The...

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On December 9 The Pirate Bay was raided at the Nacka station, a nuclear-proof data center built into a mountain complex near Stockholm.

Despite the rise of various TPB clones and rumors of reincarnations, thepiratebay.se domain remained inaccessible, until today.

This morning the Pirate Bay’s nameservers were updated to ones controlled by their domain name registrar binero.se

A few minutes ago came another big change when The Pirate Bay’s main domain started pointing to a new IP-address (178.175.135.122) connected to a server hosted in Moldova.

Thus far there’s not much to see. The domain only displays a waving pirate flag, but the recent changes will give many estranged Pirate Bay users hope that the site will be restored to its former glory

The DNS changes haven’t propagated everywhere yet, but soon most people should see the following landing page.

Whether a full comeback is in the works remains a mystery for now. Interestingly, the source of the page shows that the pirate flag is hosted by Isohunt.to’s “Open Bay” site where it serves as a background.

TorrentFreak asked both the Pirate Bay and Isohunt.to crews for a comment, thus far without a response. It could be that TPB and Isohunt.to are collaborating on something, hopefully we’ll hear more on that soon.

A few days ago Isohunt.to launched “The Open Bay” initiative, which allows anyone to run a “copy” of The Pirate Bay. The TPB crew previously said that it would like to see as many clones as possible, so perhaps the domain will link to that for the time being.

“We’ve always lived by Kopimi. We love being cloned. It would be amazing if, like in the classic movie Spartacus, everyone could stand up and say “I am The Pirate Bay,” TPB’s Mr 10100100000 told us earlier.

Time will tell whether Pirate Bay’s “comeback” will be a full one, an encouragement for people to start their own clones, or something completely different.

—

Update: Thepiratebay.se A records now appear to be empty.

Update: The page also includes and ad code, so people may see popups and other nasty stuff.

Update: Isohunt.to responded and says it has nothing to do with the ‘comeback.’

“They simply included the video from our domain. And right now we have no idea what the TPB crew want to say by this,” Isohunt.to tells us.

Update: TPB added a clock/timer to the site now (using Flipclock) counting the time that’s passed since the raid (approximately, as the counter is relative to the visitor’s time).

Update: The JyO7wNzc8xht47QKWohfDVj6Sc2qH+X5tBCT+uetocIJcjQnp/2f1ViEBR+ty0Cz AES string looks ‘promising’ http://thepiratebay.se/aes.png (yes someone may have created a BitTorrent Sync key with the same characters. This was almost certainly created after it appeared on TPB, so nothing official).

Update: And there’s a Hydra image now… “/pipe.png” class=”sneakyhint” A reference to TPB’s previous hydra mentions.

Breaking story, updates may follow.

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

The Appoquinimink, DE school board is contemplating requiring parental permission slips for students who want to check YA novels out of their school library; district secondary education curriculum director Ray Gravuer came up with this silly idea in response to a parental complaint. Read the rest

The ExtraTorrent Release Group, or ETRG for short, is one of the best known sources for pirated movies.

The group releases dozens of popular films on various torrent sites each week and has a steady following of movie fans looking for fresh content.

Some of these followers track new releases through ETRG’s Twitter account. While the group doesn’t link to any copyrighted material, it does list the titles of new releases there.

One would think that ETRG isn’t violating Twitter’s policies by merely pasting a title. However, a few days ago two tweets mentioning “The Signal” got them in trouble.

The tweets were targeted with a DMCA takedown request which led to the immediate suspension of the group’s account.

“Twitter suspended ETRG’s account with no logical or valid reason. In fact they didn’t even give the reason. All I got was a DMCA notification and next day the account was suspended,” ETRG tells TF.

In its copyright and DMCA policy Twitter explains that it takes action against “tweets containing links to allegedly infringing materials,” but ETRG didn’t post any links, just text.

And there are more strange things happening. The takedown notice was sent on behalf of “Wild Side” and also targeted tweets from @PRoDJi and @TorrentBird. These tweets were removed as well, but interestingly enough the associated accounts haven’t been suspended.

ETRG is disappointed with Twitter’s actions and says the company is caving in to unreasonable demands from copyright holders.

“It shows how these sites are influenced by the powerful movie industry to do anything they want,” the group says.

A few years ago the group stopped posting links after it has its account suspended and at the time Twitter re-enabled it within a day. But even without links it couldn’t escape another suspension.

Hoping to get its account reinstated ETRG filed a counter-notice, but several days have passed since and they have yet to hear back from Twitter. Meanwhile, the account remains suspended.

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_{Pirate Twitter credit}

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

The telcos' ongoing battle against Net Neutrality have led them to make a lot of silly legalistic arguments, but one in particular has opened the whole Internet to grave danger from a legal attack from the entertainment industry, which may finally realize its longstanding goal of subverting DNS to help it censor sites it dislikes, even if it makes life much easier for thieves and spies who use DNS tricks to rob and surveil. Read the rest

Police in Beloit, WI planned to fight gun-violence by asking citizens to let them come into their houses and search for guns, but not many people were interested in this offer. Read the rest

Too many Oklahomans and Nebraskans are buying weed in Colorado and bringing it back home, and it has made the attorney generals in those states sad. They want Uncle Sam to take Colorado's legal weed away and give it back to the black market so that the drug cartels, corrupt government officials, and the prison industry can go back to business as usual. Read the rest

You've been able to yell voice commands at Android smartphones and Android Wear smartwatches for some time now, but soon you'll be able to do the same to a Chromebook computer. A new feature available to Chromebooks running early release software lets users say "Ok Google" to activate voice commands and searches on the laptop, just like on many Android smartphones. Voice commands can be used to perform web searches, get itineraries, check the weather, and more. The Chromebook will always listen for the voice command so long as the screen is on and the display is unlocked.

The feature was first described by Google employee François Beaufort on Google+. It is currently only available on the Chrome Dev channel, and users need to enable a...

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This year Popcorn Time became an instant hit by offering BitTorrent-powered streaming inside an easy-to-use Netflix-style interface.

The breakthrough app had Hollywood concerned but luckily for them the developers shut it down after a few weeks, saying that they wanted to move on with their lives.

It was never revealed whether Hollywood forces had threatened the developers, but an MPAA update that surfaced as part of the Sony leaks now reveals that this was indeed the case.

In the MPAA’s “first quarter update,” sent to the movie studio heads in March, the group stated that it had “scored a major victory in shutting down the key developers of Popcorn Time.”

The MPAA added that the investigative and enforcement actions required collaboration on three continents, which they hoped would prevent Popcorn Time from becoming a “major piracy threat.”

Unfortunately for Hollywood the threat didn’t go away. The Open Source project was quickly picked up by others and in recent months several popular forks gained steady user-bases.

Popcorn-Time.se, one of the most-used forks, has since turned into a bigger threat than the original application. As a result, Hollywood is trying its best to dismantle it.

Previously the fork had its domain name suspended and over the past few weeks found itself being kicked out by various hosting providers. Complaints from the Hollywood backed anti-piracy group BREIN were to blame.

The hosting troubles resulted in long periods of downtime, which isn’t good for morale among the developers.

“We had a tough two weeks with a few shut downs that came unexpectedly. We moved our service through three different hosting companies in these weeks,” the Popcorn-Time.se team tells TF.

“All caved after a few hours to a day or two, after ‘some’ copyright organization contacted them, saying suddenly that they don’t want to host our ‘illegal’ domain. We were shocked actually to see how quickly these organizations work.”

While Popcorn-Time.se might have been down, they’re not out yet. The team is determined to keep its software available and will be releasing new updates to the app today.

“BREIN is on our backs? Well, we found a new hosting company which we hope will be more cooperative, and we’re releasing updates for both Windows and Mac today to show everyone that business is as usual.”

“No one said it was gonna be easy, but what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, and we’re not into dying… ;-),” the Popcorn-Time.se team concludes.

Whether other Popcorn Time forks have had similar problems recently is unknown, but the above makes it clear that Hollywood is still determined to crush these popular apps.

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

 The FBI has officially put the blame on the North Korean government for the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack which resulted in the theft of mass amounts of personal and commercial data, as well as the shut down of Sony Pictures work computers. A group calling itself the “Guardians of Peace” had claimed responsibility. In the FBI’s full official statement, which is now… Read More

Last Friday, The Verge published leaked documents revealing a secret legal campaign to discredit Google, coordinated by the MPAA on behalf of the major Hollywood studios. The documents show a continued focus on the power to blocking sites from the web — a central issue in the 2011 SOPA debates — and a concerted effort to enlist state attorney generals in that fight. Both Google and the MPAA have issued harsh statements over the news, but today the fight is growing into a full-fledged legal battle.

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A splendid time with the actor-writer-blogger-geek-champion turned host of TableTop Read the rest

Critical thinking is crucial for making better decisions and effective communication. You can consistently think more critically about a topic or opinion, and explore new perspectives, by using Socratic questions.

Considering other people's thought processes can improve your empathy and social intelligence. For example, you can use these questions to explore a topic or decision and consider different viewpoints. from different viewpoints:

• What would be an alternative?
• What is another way to look at it?
• Would you explain why it is necessary or beneficial, and who benefits?
• Why is [this] the best?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of...?
• How are...and ...similar?
• What is a counterargument for...?

Socratic questions were devised by Greek philosopher Socrates to guide seek meaning and truth, clarify assumptions, and logically draw more precise implications. In addition to enhancing your critical thinking, you use socratic questions to win arguments.

The Six Types of Socratic Questions | University of Michigan

Photo by Jirka Matousek.

 Citigroup raised the valuation of Instagram this morning from $19 billion to $35 billion. The photo-sharing network recently announced it had surpassed 300 million active users, and has taken steps toward cleaning up spam accounts, as well as adding new filters and features. Read More

There are a lot of considerations to make when buying a TV. Chief among them are what size and viewing distance you need. This handy tool takes the guesswork out of both of them.

To simplify a bit of complex science, the bigger your TV is (without changing the resolution), the less crisp it looks. And the farther away you need to sit before you can't tell the difference anyway. This handy tool from ForRent.com shows you the best viewing distance for 720p, 1080p, and 4K

There's still a bit of guesswork to be done based on the size of your apartment, but if you're looking at a few different TV models, you can use this to see how far away you'll need to sit in order to get the most out of it. If a particular size requires more space than you have, you can safely get a smaller (and likely cheaper) size without a loss in perceived quality.

What TV is Best For My Apartment? | For Rent

The Pirate Bay raid last week was a landmark incident which disrupted the BitTorrent ecosystem.

Many people have been looking for Pirate Bay alternatives in recent days. While there is nothing that can match the old Pirate Bay, there are plenty of copies available.

Earlier this week the TPB crew said that it would be a good thing to have clones of the site all over the Internet, and it appears that the Isohunt.to team heard this message loud and clear.

The same team that previously resurrected isoHunt launched a copy of TPB on Oldpiratebay.org last week, and now they’re opening up its code to the public.

The initiative, properly named The Open Bay, opens up the source to their Pirate Bay clone. This means that in a few simple steps anyone can have a copy of the Pirate Bay installed on his or her own domain.

“We, the team that brought you Isohunt.to and oldpiratebay.org are bringing you the next step in torrent evolution. Open Pirate Bay source code,” Isohunt.to says.

According to the people behind “The Open Bay” there’s a lesson to be learned from the isoHunt and Pirate Bay shutdowns. Instead of a few big players, the torrent community itself should be a swarm of copies.

“We want to change the torrent landscape which has been frozen for 10 years. We need to push it ahead,” Isohunt.to tells TF.

“The Open Pirate Bay source code will give absolutely anyone with minimal knowledge of how the Internet and websites work and some basic hosting, the opportunity to create a pirate bay copy on his own domain.”

To do so, the Isohunt.to team offers code and scripts and a large database dump with instructions to get it up and running on a simple shared hosting account. In addition, they put all files in a GitHub repository so people can create improved copies of their copy.

We have to emphasize that the term Pirate Bay “copy” should be used loosely here. The standard release includes oldpiratebay.org’s theme and a database dump of roughly 8 million torrent links, while Pirate Bay only had around 3 million.

The difference is explained by the fact that The Open Bay database also includes files that originated from KickassTorrents and Isohunt.to. The original Pirate Bay code or descriptions are not there, and it’s not possible to upload or comment either.

Finally, it may go without saying but people should keep in mind that hosting a Pirate Bay copy comes with a legal risk.

Whether the surge in Pirate Bay copies is really a good development is open to debate, but we’ll examine this topic in an upcoming article.

For those who want a local copy of The Pirate Bay’s archive for historical purposes there’s a safer option. A recent dump of the files database, complete with all original pirate bay IDs, torrent descriptions and hashes is available here.

Torrent savvy people who know how magnet links work can even use the latter as a local Pirate Bay search engine, with the help of notepad.

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

A new study by Spotify shows that "windowing" — the practice of delaying the launch of albums and songs in certain formats or locations — can be detrimental to an artist's success. Spotify analysts scrutinized the success of Meghan Trainor's pop hit "All About That Bass" in two markets — in the United States, where the song appeared in stores, on streaming services, and on the radio at the same time, and the United Kingdom, where the song only went on sale a month and a half after it first appeared on Spotify UK.

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You don't need to live in the UK to turn to the BBC for your daily news—there's already a decent chance you're either using the company's mobile app or consuming its content through some other means—but you do need to live on that side of the pond if you want early access to the upcoming version of the Android app. BBC has made the beta version available to British folks through an official Play Store testing trial.

BBC News App Gets Official Play Store Beta Testing Group For People In The UK was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Large, carnivorous predators in Europe are doing pretty well for themselves. Europe's populations of wolves, brown bears, wolverines, and lynx have recovered from a previous decline — in fact, their numbers have risen to near-record highs, according to a study published in Science today. The recovery may be due to Europe's animal conservation approach — an approach that allows for the presence of large predators among human populations, instead isolating them in state parks and conservation areas the way North America does, researchers said.

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At the end of last week, we dug up news of Project Goliath, a secret Hollywood project to investigate and discredit Google on issues of copyright and web freedom. But while the documents showed how bad things had gotten between Google and Hollywood, they also showed how eagerly many state attorneys general took up the MPAA’s anti-Google crusade – particularly Mississippi’s Jim Hood. And less than a week after the documents were made public, that eagerness is starting to have real consequences.

Hood has been at the center of many of the recent legal actions against Google in the US, investigating the company for involvement in both pharmaceutical counterfeiting and content piracy, but never assembling enough evidence for concrete...

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It's that time again: Steam's taken the wrap off of its annual winter sale, meaning tons of discounts on great games starting now through January 2nd. Unlike the "Exploration Sale" last month, this one's the real deal, complete with flash sales, community choice discounts, and more.

As always, our guide to getting the best deals during Steam sales is your go-to resource to make sure you don't jump the gun and buy a game before it's been properly discounted, or wait too long and miss out on a great deal. You can see that post below, or hop to it over here.

Top deals right now include Civilzation: Beyond Earth, Dark Souls II, and Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edtiion—and as always, voting in the community sales will get you trading cards for badges and other goodies. Hit the link below to check it out.

Steam

 Last month we reported that Microsoft was considering spinning out MixRadio, but it turns out the music service’s future is with someone else: Japan-based messaging firm Line which just announced an undisclosed deal to buy it. Read More

"Unethical hacks are life hacks that will help you advance through life by taking advantage of loopholes in society." I'm thinking these could somehow be used to create a game in the vein of Cards Against Humanity.