A collection of earrings that is not kept neatly adds up to your daily dose of stressors. How so? They tend to be easily lost, tangled, or broken. So to obliterate this additional stressor once and for all, it's time to look for an effective earring storage system and a creative way to display them every time you dress up.

Good news, I have more bright ideas other than just storing them in traditional jewelry boxes. Actually, there are several simple and not so expensive organizational solutions for that collection of earrings lying on your dresser.

Follow the simple tips presented to you here to find (or craft) a jewelry holder that will display and protect your earrings in a way that will make any woman jealous.

1. Jewelry hanger - set time on your day off to look for wooden clothes hangers you have not been using for a while. Next, visit your local Handyman store to buy small hooks. Now, you can attach each hook to the wooden clothes hanger. The photo below will help you see how it's done.

Speaking at a presentation in DC, Bruce Schneier nailed the strategic cost of allowing the NSA to sabotage Internet security through BULLRUN: it has cost the US government all credibility as a contributor to Internet governance. The total depraved indifference to everyday Internet users displayed in the sabotage program means that the era of the US being seen as the best steward for the health and integrity of the net has come to a close.

Last year, Swedish artist Anders Ramsell released a teaser film for Blade Runner - The Aquarelle Edition, a loving, visually arresting take on the sci-fi classic that on its own took 3,285 watercolor paintings to create. The complete 35-minute film is finally upon us — and it took 12,597 paintings to pull it off.

This take on Blade Runner was clearly a painstaking labor of love, but it's so worth it. Ramsell took the audio from the original film, and lays it atop each of his pieces to create a "paraphrasing" of Ridley Scott's opus. As with the first short, the full film forces you to tease out the emotional force of each scene through the atmospheric score and swirling colors. Check out Roy Batty's famous "Tears in Rain" speech at...

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Twitter Alerts - a service that Twitter launched in September for emergency, relief and charity organizations from the U.S., Japan and Korea to send out critical messages to opted-in users - is getting more international. Today, the newly public company is turning on Twitter Alerts in the UK and Ireland.

Some 57 Twitter accounts across the two countries have signed on so far, mostly in the UK. They include all 47 UK police forces, An Garda Síochána in Ireland, the London Fire Brigade, the Mayor of London's office, the Foreign Office, and the Environment Agency - who will now send those interested alerts on their latest critical news, with the information appearing as highlighted Tweets, SMS notifications, and push notifications if you use Twitter's iOS or Android apps.

For all of these, users have to opt-in, and the idea here is that the organizations doing the alerting will be keeping their messages limited to only the most important ones. “While participating organisations choose what information merits a Twitter Alerts designation, this feature is intended for crisis, disaster and emergency communications,” Twitter notes.

“Getting fast and accurate information to the public in a major incident or terrorist attack really could make a life-saving difference,” noted Commander David Martin, who oversees emergency planning for the Metropolitan Police Service, in a statement. “Using social networking sites, including Twitter, gives us additional ways to talk directly to the public. Twitter Alerts means that our messages will stand out when it most matters.”

For now it seems like the only way to sign up for alerts for particular organizations is to visit Twitter's Alert's pages to browse and add accounts - there are no “alert” buttons on the accounts themselves.

As we pointed out in September, Twitter Alerts was borne out of “Lifeline,” a service that Twitter created to help with the relief effort after the earthquake disaster in Japan in 2012. For a platform that has been building up its credibility as the go-to place for people to get real-time information about what's on TV, Twitter Alerts is a way to show that you can use the same framework for potentially more urgent purposes.

Same means, different ends, and in the end, all controlled by Twitter - which cannot be said for some of the other “alerts” services that have run over Twitter in the UK in the past. Last year, for example, around the London 2012 Olympics ticket sell-out furore, several accounts popped up offering users alerts for when tickets would get released for different, previously sold-out events, but Twitter took many of them down.

Since last year, Twitter has been trying out a lot of different features as part of a philosophy of innovate through experimentation, from new features in its Timeline to new looks on its apps. Some of these go on to become full features, and some fall by the wayside. The fact that Twitter Alerts is now expanding beyond its its original footprint is a sign that it might be one of those that is here to stay.

Although a spokesperson declined to comment to me about where Twitter Alerts might go next, I noticed that when you signed up for Alerts to come to your phone, you were given a specific lists of countries from which you could register your phone. This could be a list of where Twitter may be looking to launch this service next.

Alerts complements some of the other products Twitter has launched in recent months that use notifications to flag information to its users - a way to help shape the service and promote people to interact more on the platform. EventParrot and MagicRecs use direct messages sent to those who follow the accounts with details respectively of big events, and users and tweets seeing surges of momentum. Twitter labels both accounts “experiments” for now.

While both MagicRecs and EventParrot are personalized to your own profile as it exists on Twitter (it essentially alerts you to what's going on in your own defined Twitter sphere of influence), Alerts is positioned a bit differently. The service is more like a dedicated one-to-many broadcast channel for those who have opted in to receive it, providing the organizations with a way to highlight certain public tweets for those who want to see them. Given that many people follow hundreds or thousands of accounts, and unless you are a power user who combs the site for all the latest news, there are changes that you will miss things; this is one way of you making sure you do not.

For now, Alerts are free both for consumers and NGOs and emergency organizations to activate and use - a reminder of how Twitter has positioned itself as the town square for the connected world. But as Twitter builds these out, and measures what kind of a response people have to the different features, I wouldn't be surprised to see the same basic concept applied to paid and sponsored pushed alerts, too.

Charity donation platform startup, Believe.in, whose investors include Index Ventures and Greylock Partners, has expanded its reach outside the U.K. - and beyond its own fee-less charity donation social network - with the launch of a white label product aimed at charities seeking donation processing tools.

The tools are being offered initially in five countries (all English-speaking): the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Ireland and Australia, targeting the 2.3 million charities operating across this region.

Believe.in names Blackbaud as its main competitor, although co-founder and CEO Matthias Metternich notes that each of the markets it is now targeting has “nuances” - “where either there are no players, or there are players who are focused on being consumer facing giving platforms, rather than the nuts and bolts that power non-profits wherever they are”.

Believe.in's white label product consists of fundraising, donation, events and appeal pages that can be customised to match a charity's branding and integrated into their existing website. The product is designed to work across different device types, from desktop to mobile, and to easily hook into social media site to help campaigns expand their reach. 

The tools also include data analytics dashboards - to enable charities to track the performance of donation drives, marketing efforts and ongoing donor outreach - and support for back­office functions. Pricing starts at free (plus flat card fees) so charities can kick its tyres; to £95pm for a Pro account; or more for bespoke enterprise price plans.

Believe.in's own U.K.-specific donation social network - which recently had a Pinterest-style makeover - has now become a charity, it said today. The platform has differentiated itself from the online charity giving competition by not taking a cut of donations. Believe.in hands the entire donation amount to the charity, with only card charges deducted.

But with zero fees, there's zero profit from donations. Previously Believe.in had said it planned to monetise the platform via add-on services that charities could sign up for, namely the analytics and backoffice functions it's now offering via its white label product.

Metternich confirmed to TechCrunch that it's changed its monetisation strategy, and has now split it out entirely as the new white label play. He confirmed that Believe.in's own social network platform will do away with all fees for ProServices.

“The [Believe.in] social network was not a charity… The reason for the change is that introducing the breadth of our enterprise technology within the context of our social network stopped making sense once this started to go beyond engagement, building community and increasing awareness,” said Metternich via email.

“We like to break formats, but even for us and our customers, talking about CRM and big data through the lens of a social network was complex. We decided to therefore split these initiatives out from one another.”

Centralising all charity activity onto its own platform also appears to have been a push too far for the third sector.

“While charities have the appetite to use both [their own websites and our donation platform], they really need our technology within their own digital touch-points, e.g websites,” he added. ”Hiving off their audiences to intermediary, consumer-facing platform brands means they are forfeiting direct relationships and ultimately ownership for short-term potential monetary gains.”

By splitting out its donation platform and processing tools as a white label offering, Believe.in can give charities the ability to take advantage of new technology to ramp up their donations without requiring they become dependent on a secondary platform, he added.

“We want to de-risk the prospect of leveraging new technologies and help break dependencies by providing the nuts and bolts that powers charities wherever they are,” he said. “This also means upgrading our infrastructure, rapid roll-out and increasing functionality to address pain-points on non-profit websites. To that end, we have upgraded our white-label solution's feature sets and now handle multi-currency donations.”

Believe.in's own charitable donation social network platform now has nearly 1,000 U.K. charities using it, according to Metternich. It will presumably be using that base to gather data on what charities are after to feed back into its white label tools, and for cross-marketing those paid b2b products.

Nokia, as we know it, is going away. The company itself will remain, of course. It might even be consistently profitable some day. But the face of Nokia that most consumers are familiar with will be a thing of the past. Nokia will soon sell off its devices and services business to Microsoft for about $5 billion as part of a $7.2 billion deal. But in the meantime, the company has a product pipeline to clear and the new Lumia 1520 is certainly one of the more interesting devices Nokia will be launching before the big changing of the guard. The 1520 marks Nokia's first foray into the increasingly popular phablet category and if not for Apple, Nokia would be the last major smartphone vendor to enter the space. But is the company's new 1520 just a bigger Lumia phone, or is it also a better Lumia phone that continues moving in the right direction and picks up where the Lumia 1020 left off?

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A new report from Reuters has discovered widespread accounting fraud at the Pentagon, describing more than $8 trillion disappearing into a mess of corrupted data, erroneous reports, and unauditable ledgers. Sources from the Department of Finance and Accounting describe the arduous process of squaring the Navy's books with the US Treasury outlays, dealing with obviously inaccurate numbers or entries that were simply left blank. The data usually arrives just two days before deadline, and supervisors direct the office to enter false numbers — known as "plugs" — to square the accounts and conceal the agencies' patchy bookkeeping. The result is fraudulent figures that can reach as high as a trillion dollars in a single year, simply to...

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Every week we cover new Android apps with Fresh Meat on Wednesday, followed by Android Gaming on Thursday and Top 10 app updates on Friday. On Mondays we look back to see which ones were the most crowd-pleasing among our audience. Read on for the 10 most popular Android apps among your peers from last week.

1. True Launcher

App info: True Launcher is a new launcher that focuses on organization and organizes your apps by the category instead of alphabetically.

2. CyanogenMod Installer

App info: This installer aids in installing the popular CyanogenMod available for select devices. Note: This app does require a PC and USB cable. OSX support is currently in development.

3. Google Search

App info: One of the fastest ways to search the web or device for data you are looking to retrieve.

4. Google Keyboard

App info: This keyboard adds Emoji support for those of you running Android 4.4 KitKat. Google Keyboard also provides you Voice Typing and Gesture Swipe features.

5. Google Opinion Rewards

App info: By taking surveys, you can add money to your Google Play account for future purchases. The amount of money you receive for the survey varies, but free money added to your Google account never hurts!

6. Call of Duty®

App info: Many new games such as Call of Duty®: Ghosts are releasing companion apps that add additional features and modes to enhance your gaming experience.

7. Q4 Keyboard

App info: Q4 Keyboard introduces a unique floating color QWERTY keyboard that can be reduced to 4 keys for increased typing performance. Q4 predicts what you want to type and will learn how YOU type to develop your personal dictionary.

8. CalculatorNg

App info: A holo-style calculator that gives you basic and advanced math features. Additional features include shake to clear data and swipe to delete historical entries.

9. Grand Theft Auto: iFruit

App info: Use this to stay informed about what’s going on in GTA V. You can also customize your car using the iFruit app.

10. Camera Awesome

App info: SmugMug’s popular iOS app comes to Android. Camera Awesome lets you fine tune your photos to give you professional quality pictures on your device.

Note:  To ensure apps receive a fair chance to make the list, we will retire any app that has made the list for 3 consecutive weeks and will place it in our Android and Me App Hall of Fame. We will post this Hall of Fame list in a dedicated series.

Android: Apps like Wallpaper Changer will rotate the wallpaper on your Android device at periodic intervals, but you have to select the images for it from your gallery. If you want some fantastic high-res images as your background, get them automatically from 500px with 500 Firepaper.

The free app lets you choose where to grab images from 500px across feature (popular, upcoming, editor's choice, fresh today, fresh yesterday, fresh this week) or categories (animals, film, concert, black and white, nature, landscapes, food, travel). You can set the update interval (in time or on every time you switch off the screen), brightness, and whether to use parallax effect. Finally, choose whether you want to update the images only over Wi-Fi or not—a smart choice because those high-res images might eat into your data plan.

You can't save any of the images, and can show one for a maximum of 24 hours. Portrait and landscape images are different and the app has a preset cache limit of 256MB.

500 Firepaper (Free) | Google Play

One recurring problem with the copyright industry is that it gets away scot-free with every glaring and egregious abuse of copyright monopoly law to silence other people, despite breaking the social contract.

We have seen examples of the copyright monopoly law being abused into outright censorship again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and… well, you get the picture. The glaring, egregious cases happen on a daily basis. The ones we never hear about probably happen in the tens or hundreds per second.

The premise is simple: since the copyright industry and other bullies risk absolutely nothing by sending out a copyright monopoly claim, they will keep doing so to silence protected speech, crush competition, and stifle legitimate criticism. This isn’t just fraud, it is a real problem for society and it is an audacious breaking of the social contract. In a word, it is – or should be – criminal.

Further, another serious consequence of this non-stop hammering against competition, criticism, satire, and fair use is that it moves the gray area for what is acceptable and what isn’t. If the copyright industry can relentlessly launch unfounded lawsuits against people who can’t defend themselves, despite the copyright industry knowingly being in the wrong, then the result over a number of years is a shift of the expected norm. This is a deliberate strategy from the copyright industry to skew the social norms away from a free market and idea of free speech, and toward a total control of people’s communications, leading to yet more harshening of the harmful copyright monopoly.

If we are to have this kind of distribution monopoly, the very least we can demand is that punishments for abuses of the monopoly come symmetrically: that the punishments are equal for violating the monopoly as a non-monopoly-holder or as a monopoly-holder.

In cleartext, this means that the same punishments and damages would be handed out for falsely using the copyright monopoly to silence criticism, free speech, or competition, as are handed out today for violating the distribution and duplication monopoly. And making the punishments symmetrical like that is absolutely, 100% reasonable.

Remember how the RIAA and MPAA expect everybody else to know when they are violating the copyright monopoly, but at the same time, violate that monopoly themselves regularly on what can’t be described as any more than an “oops” basis? Remember how copyright monopoly cases are so complex they can end up in the Supreme Court, yet the copyright industry demands that each and every Average Joe should know instinctively what is legal and what is not?

It’s all bullshit, of course. What the copyright industry is trying to push is a general blanket ban for anybody but themselves to copy freely. As for themselves, the copyright industry has ripped off artists since the 1950s.

It’s more than time that the harsh punishments for violating this monopoly go fully symmetrical. If you send out a copyright takedown notice or otherwise assert monopoly rights, automated or not, you must be held responsible for it – and possibly go to jail for a few years and pay up to $150,000 in statutory damages, per infraction, if the takedown notice is false or erroneous. That’s what the copyright industry holds as “reasonable” in one direction, and therefore, it must be reasonable in the other direction, too.

Obviously, the copyright industry would go ballistic over this – that there would be an idea of power symmetry in the copyright monopoly. That’s because the copyright industry has never been held to one shred of accountability. Such a day is several decades overdue.

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

In an effort to promote its DSLR cameras as filmmaking tools, Canon launched a promotion called Project Imagination with the help of director Ron Howard. As part of the challenge, several high-profile celebrities stepped behind the camera to make short films of their own, with fashion designer Georgina Chapman directing A Dream of Flying. Written by none other than Neil Gaiman, it's the story of a young girl with the ability to fly — a skill that she's admonished for exploring rather than simple accepting her station as an ordinary human being. Gaiman's unique voice and view of the world are unmistakeable, but don't take our word for it; watch the short film for yourself below.

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You spend a lot of waking hours at your computer, so why not make it a little prettier (and more productive)? Here are 10 ways to customize every inch of your desktop, no matter what operating system you use.

WARNING: The deeper you go with customization, the more you risk causing problems with your system, particularly when changing system files. We've tried a bunch of these tools and apps before, but you should always back up your system before you start any deep customization!

10. Collect Some Sweet Wallpapers

Still rocking the default windows wallpaper? Maybe it's time to switch it up. There are a lot of great wallpaper sitesout there, but you can make your wallpaper even more awesome with a few tools. Desktoppr is an awesome way to browse and sync wallpapers with all your computers, and then rotate between them with a good wallpaper switcher. Wallpapers don't have to be a time waster, either—they can be motivational and productive, too. Check our weekly Wallpaper Wednesday series for more wallpaper fun, too.

9. Install a Custom Dock

The default Windows taskbar is actually pretty awesome, especially once you beef it up. But if you prefer the aesthetic and functional nature of a dock, we recommend checking out a customizable dock like the $10 ObjectDock, or the older (but free) RocketDock. If you're on Linux, check out Docky instead. If you're on OS X, you can customize your dock with something like DockMod.

8. Change Up Your Icons

Maybe you have one or two apps with ugly icons, or maybe you want to change them all up for a more unified, customized look. No matter what your desires, it's pretty easy to change the icons on your system. Individual apps and folders are extremely easy to change on both Windowsand OS X, though system icons are a bit tougher. Windows users should check out IconPackager, which can do a heck of a lot—but in my experience is a bit finicky, so be sure to back up your system first.

7. Tweak Your Favorite Web Sites

They aren't part of your "desktop," per se, but you probably spend a lot of time looking at the same web sites, and those are customizable too. Check out our guide to customizing your favorite sites with userscripts and user styles for more, and be sure to check out some of our site-specific guides too—like this one for Facebook or this one for Gmail. It's amazing how much better (and better looking) you can make your favorite sites with a few tweaks.

6. Organize Your Desktop Clutter

Of course, a lot of these customizations will mean nothing if your desktop is covered in icons. All it takes is a little organization: with an app like Fences or Desktop Groups you can not only make things more attractive, but keep everything organized by category, project, or whatever else you want, so you can reach everything easier.

5. Skin Your Windows

Tired of the boring grey window borders and traditional buttons in the corner? You can spice up your windows with WindowBlinds (Windows) or something like CrystalClear Interface (Mac). Linux users don't have as easy a one-size-fits-all method—as it depends a lot on your desktop environment and window manager—but sites like GNOME-look.org are a good place to start looking for good themes.

4. Add and Change Your Favorite Features

This one's a little more function than form (not that we're complaining). Sometimes the best desktop customization comes in smaller tweaks that help you get things done better—and that's where our favorite system tweakers for Windows, OS X, and Linux come in. With the right tweaker in your arsenal, you can customize your operating system's built-in menus, settings, fonts, or anything else under the hood.

3. Get Some Neat Desktop Effects

Ever feel like your windows could make a snazzier entrance when you un-minimize them? Ever get jealous of that awesome desktop cube Linux users have? Windows users can get in on the fun, too. Free app Dexpot has a few cool animations to contribute (including the aforementioned cube), but if you really want to take it further, WindowFX is an awesome (but sadly, $10) app with a ton of animations and customization built-in. Check out the video above to see it in action.

2. Overhaul Your Skin Entirely

This is definitely one of the more sweeping changes you can make to your system—not to mention riskier—but if you really want to change everything from the ground up, there are a lot of cool system-wide skins out there you might like. Want to give everything a cool transparent look? Check out the Shine skin. Want to make your Windows system look like OS X? The Mavericks Transformation Pack is for you. Search around sites like DeviantART and our Featured Desktop series for inspiration and links to some pretty cool skins, if you're feeling adventurous.

1. Create a Customized, Informative HUD

If there's one thing we've learned from the awesome desktops you guys send in, it's that a cool HUD can go pretty far. Windows users should check out our guide to creating an attractive, customized HUD with Rainmeter. Rainmeter is an awesome program with a ton of cool skins and themes out there for you to try out. OS X users might have to do a bit more work, but can create a lot of cool stuff with GeekTool. Linux users should check out Conky, our favorite customizable system monitor, for all your HUDdy needs.

Title image remixed from by tristienm, puuikibeach, and Bodo Taschi.

Welcome back to Android Gaming Weekly, our weekly recap on new game releases. We still plan to cover upcoming releases and games we’re playing, but this column is dedicated to new games you can install and start playing right now. Check out our top picks and let us know if you have any suggestions for next week in the comments below.

Tank Battles

Description: Get ready for Tank Battles! This is General McTankerson, the greatest tank commander in the world, speaking! Many have come to my island for the Tank Battles Tournament, but only one can be crowned the Tank King. Will it be you? Roll out and let the Tank Battles begin!

Meltdown©

Description: Become the most skilled soldier and get the best upgrades. Choose your weapons, buckle up and start your mission. You need to get rid of all the different robots. Enemies have different combat styles and gear.

Riddick: The Merc Files

Description: Escape them, trick them, or eliminate them. It’s your choice. You are not afraid of the dark, are you?

Anomaly 2

Description: Anomaly 2 is a sequel to the critically acclaimed Anomaly Warzone Earth. Maintaining the core elements of the original, Anomaly 2 adds new features to the single-player campaign and finally puts your skills to the test in a completely unique experience: the dynamic tower defense vs. tower offense multiplayer mode!

RE-VOLT 2

Description: The new and improved version of the intriguing racing game! Many fun stages! Thrilling racing missions! The Grand Prix race for players around the world! We invite you to RE-VOLT 2, the best RC car racing game ever!

Doraemon Repair Shop

Description: Join Doraemon, the futuristic robot cat, on another one of his crafty schemes to get Dorayaki in this cute and challenging time management game set in Doraemon’s all-purpose repair shop. Prepare to test your speed and reflexes!

Naught 2

Description: Play with gravity to guide Naught through a mysterious underground world where darkness is a relentless enemy that takes many forms. Naught 2 is an adventure and platform game that challenges your skills giving you full control of Naught and his environment.

Puzzled

Description: PuzzledGame is an addictive game that offers a new approach to puzzle solving. Generate infinite puzzles using your facebook pictures or the ingame photos!

Battle Command!

Description: Atten-TION! Battle Command! is a military strategy game set in the not-too-distant future. You’ll take command of a rag-tag fighting force with potential, but in desperate need of your leadership. Build your base, raise your army and go to war against other players in an epic quest for domination.

GT Racing 2: The Real Car Exp

Description: GT Racing 2: The Real Car Experience is a true-to-life automotive journey featuring the most prestigious cars in the world! The best-selling franchise is back for free and it’s designed to offer an unprecedented level of driving enjoyment, whether playing solo or multiplayer.

COMING SOON

While Hollywood and the music industry are currently working hard to have dozens of millions of infringing links removed from Google, they are increasingly trying to cut off users’ access to those links by way of website censorship.

Interestingly this is being driven by United States-based companies yet no sites have yet been blocked in their homeland. Instead, the major studios and recording labels have zoomed in on Europe – the UK in particular – and between them have had close to 30 sites blocked by the country’s major ISPs.

Users of BitTorrent, streaming and other file-sharing sites in the UK are soon going to have to get used to a new reality. Currently none of the top 10 torrent sites listed in our 2013 chart are available by direct means. Furthermore, the MPA are slowly but surely taking out the top streaming sites while the BPI concentrates on some of the big MP3 download portals.

To find out what kind of a dent these actions have had on accessibility, TorrentFreak took a look at the list of top 30 torrent sites in the world to see which ones remain unblocked in the UK. We used Alexa ranks to put them in general order, which is sufficient for this exercise. Later we’ll take a look at one or two other interesting findings.

1. YIFY-Torrents

Ranked 890 worldwide by Alexa, surprisingly YIFI Torrents has somehow managed to remain unblocked in the UK. Quite why this growing site is being left to flourish is unknown, especially since a request to block the site was made six months ago.

2. RARBG

According to data obtained from meta-search engine Torrentz.eu, RARBG has a relatively small database of around 400,700 torrents. Despite that figure being dwarfed by the availability on other lower-placed sites in this list, RARBG has a global Alexa rank of 1,986.

3. LimeTorrents

Targeted by the RIAA back in 2011, LimeTorrents has continued business as usual ever since. The site has a clean design and a reported 3,395,599 torrents. Alexa ranks the site 6,515.

4. Torrents.net

Just slightly less popular than LimeTorrents in terms of traffic, Torrents.net has a similar sized database of just over 3.4 million torrents.

5. Torlock

Created in 2010, Torlock has a database of more than 1.25 million torrents. However, the site claims that there are zero fake files in its listings. In fact, they are so confident this is the case that they offer $1 for every one a user can find.

6. TorrentFunk

According to the site’s records, TorrentFunk has more than 5.5 million torrents in its databases, which is more than any site in this ‘unblocked’ top 10. Alexa ranks the site 10,398 in the world.

7. YourBitTorrent

YourBitTorrent claims to be the “ONLY non-egoist torrent website.” The site says that since 2003 it has donated to multiple large organizations that care for the interests of animals. It has more than 4.1 million torrents and has just added a feature to add torrents to Putdrive accounts for downloading on any device.

8. SeedPeer

According the site’s stats, SeedPeer currently carries around 4.7 million torrents, 186,000 of which are verified as definitely not fake. Overall the site’s torrents are being serviced by more than a billion seeds. The site is ranked 12,634 by Alexa.

9. Vertor

Vertor is one of the few torrent sites to concentrate on having only quality torrents, i.e none that are fake, locked by passwords or containing a virus. The site claims to run on five dual-core servers with 8 GB RAM and currently hosts just over a million torrents.

10. FulldLs

With a claimed 3.39 million torrents in its database, Fulldls takes the final spot in the top 10 unblocked list. To give an idea of just how far the rankings of sites readily available in the UK have dropped due to ISP blocking, Fulldls has an Alexa ranking of 26,536. The top 10 position in our pre-blocking chart earlier in the year was taken by H33T with an Alexa rank of 1,430

Other findings

To complete our investigation, TorrentFreak examined every site currently listed in Alexa’s chart of the Top 500 most-visited sites overall in the UK.

Notably, streaming portal PrimeWire.ag is ranked 209 in the UK having quickly grown in popularity following domain issues. Other unblocked streaming sites riding high include Watchseries.lt (Alexa UK #278) and Vodly.to (Alexa UK #301). SolarMovie.so is currently placed at #364 but will soon be blocked by the leading ISPs.

Since The Pirate Bay is blocked to around 90% of UK internet subscribers, it comes as no surprise that people are looking for workarounds. Clearly many are accessing the site through PirateProxy.se, a proxy now listed as the 241st most popular site in the UK.

Also riding high (Alexa UK #413) is Come.in, a multi-site proxy that unlocks several sites including TorrentReactor, ExtraTorrent, KickassTorrents and The Pirate Bay. Interesting, VPN provider HideMyAss is now the UK’s 415th most popular site.

Conclusion

It is almost certain that the BPI and MPA will be back time and again to have fresh sites blocked in the UK and will continue to do so until the top 50 to top 100 sites have been added to the country’s unofficial blocklist. Whether this will encourage people towards official outlets is not yet clear, but the rise of the proxy and VPN services listed above (and tools such as PirateBrowser) shows that there is definitely a desire to circumvent rather than succumb to bans.

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

This Chart Of Every City's Sunset Will Brighten Your Day

The crime drama The Killing was recently cancelled for the second time, but Netflix has stepped in to give it one more chance. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the company will be producing six more episodes of the show, which will be billed as its final season. The show's writing staff and crew will be returning for the final episodes, scheduled to start production in February. They will be released in true Netflix fashion: simultaneously across all of its territories worldwide.

Created by Veena Sud, The Killing tracks the relationship of Detectives Linden (Mireille Enos) and Holder (Robocop's Joel Kinnaman). The show first centered around the death of a character named Rosie Larson, and drew favorable reviews and more than a few...

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Matthew says: "A woman paid for items from kleargear.com but never received them, so she wrote a bad review of the site on ripoffreport.com. Three years later she received a $3500 bill from Kleargear, stating that she'd violated the 'non-disparagement clause' to which she agreed when she paid for the items."

Non-Disparagement Clause

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Should you violate this clause, as determined by KlearGear.com in its sole discretion, you will be provided a seventy-two (72) hour opportunity to retract the content in question. If the content remains, in whole or in part, you will immediately be billed $3,500.00 USD for legal fees and court costs until such complete costs are determined in litigation. Should these charges remain unpaid for 30 calendar days from the billing date, your unpaid invoice will be forwarded to our third party collection firm and will be reported to consumer credit reporting agencies until paid.

Fined For Posting A Negative Review Online

In response to a copyright infringement lawsuit launched by the MPAA, Hotfile counter sued Warner Bros. two years ago for abuse of its DMCA takedown process on numerous occasions.

The file-hoster alleged that after giving Warner access to its systems the studio wrongfully took down hundreds of files including demos and Open Source software without holding the copyrights to them. The takedowns continued even after the movie studio was repeatedly notified about the false claims.

While Warner later admitted the accusations, the movie studio argue that they are not to blame because the mistakes were made by a computer, not a person. As a result, the false takedown request were not “deliberate lies.”

However, not all false takedowns were unintentional. Warner admitted that one of their employees deleted Open Source software from Hotfile on purpose. Their rationale for this was that the software in question could have speeded up infringing downloads.

Warner nonetheless asked the court for summary judgment in its favor, but in September Florida District Court Judge Kathleen Williams decided to let the issue be heard before a jury later this year. She stated that there is enough evidence showing that “Warner intentionally targeted files it knew it had no right to remove.”

Through several new filings Warner is hoping to limit the potential damage, by asking the court to exclude two issues from being discussed during the upcoming trial. The first issue deals with Hotfile’s claim that Warner committed perjury, and the other relates to an audit of the movie studio’s anti-piracy system.

The perjury motion relates to Hotfile’s Special Rightsholder Account (SRA) which Warner used to remove links from the site. This tool required the movie studio to check a box confirming “under penalty of perjury that I am owner or an authorized legal representative of the owner of the copyrights in this material.”

Since Warner admitted that they submitted false takedown requests and Hotfile specified the above requirements in its terms of service, the file-hoster argued that the studio committed a crime. However, Warner disagrees with this line of reasoning.

“That is not how perjury works, not how the DMCA works, is irrelevant to the claims the jury must decide, and would unfairly prejudice the jury against Warner by suggesting that Warner’s errors amounted to criminal acts,” Warner writes.

Warner adds that the DMCA only requires the penalty of perjury statement to confirm that the sender represents the copyright holder, not that the allegedly infringing links point to their copyrighted material, they say.

“The DMCA ‘penalty of perjury’ language is thus narrower than the SRA language that Hotfile employed. The DMCA’s language applies only to impersonating a copyright owner or sending notices on their behalf without authorization; mere misidentification of the files being taken down or the works represented therein are at most incorrect ‘statements’.”

However, Warner also removed copies of JDownloader, which they were certainly not authorized to do. But this was also not a crime either according to the the studio, since it never claimed to be representing JDownloader’s developer Appwerk GmbH.

“To fall under the ‘penalty of perjury’ language in [the DMCA section], however, Warner would have needed not to misidentify instances of JDownloader as infringing Warner works (which is what happened), but instead to correctly identify the taken-down files as JDownloader and then misrepresent itself as acting under authority from Appwerk GmbH, JDownloader’s developer.”

Interestingly, the above reasoning confirms that Warner deliberately used Hotfile’s DMCA tools to take down files that they are not the owner of, an issue that will certainly be brought up during trial.

Warner believes that the above is reason enough to exclude the “perjury” issue from trial. Hotfile can’t just make up crimes by extending the scope of the DMCA, and should not be allowed to present an argument which could mislead the jury, they claim.

In a separate motion Warner wants the court to exclude evidence Hotfile has gathered on an audit of the movie studio’s anti-piracy system, and changes that were made as a result. Warner argues that the audit is irrelevant, since it was performed after the false takedown notices were sent.

If Hotfile would use the audit to argue that the movie studio was aware of the errors in their system, this could potentially confuse the jury.

“There is a substantial risk that the jury will see evidence of Warner’s efforts to investigate the claims in Hotfile’s lawsuit and correct any sources of errors as evidence that Warner ‘knew’ about potential inaccuracies in its system at the relevant times, and improperly attribute such knowledge to Warner months earlier.”

“Because Hotfile has selectively cherry-picked the instances in which Warner located and corrected errors as part of its August 2011 audit, there is further risk that the jury will misread the evidence as ‘proving’ that Warner’s system was error-prone and seek to punish Warner for it,” Warner adds.

The above suggests that Warner is not totally confident that the trial will end well for them. It is now up to the judge to decide whether or not the issues above can be raised during trial.

The judge is also still considering a motion from Hotfile to exclude terms such as “piracy,” “theft” and “stealing” from their trial against the MPAA.

To be continued.

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

LulzSec hacker Jeremy Hammond was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release this morning for a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, reports the Guardian. Hammond pled guilty in May for having broken into the private security firm Stratfor's computers and leaking their emails to WikiLeaks, and has since been awaiting sentencing. In an interview with the Guardian, he says that a long sentencing is a "vengeful, spiteful act" by the government. "They have made it clear they are trying to send a message to others who come after me. A lot of it is because they got slapped around, they were embarrassed by Anonymous and they feel that they need to save face."

"I still believe in the importance...

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We could ask, but we already know the answer. Almost all of you have, at some time, felt the pain of waiting for an update to your phone or tablet. That’s the unpredictability of updates for Android.

You don’t ever know what you’re going to get when it comes to Android updates. Even when you think that you’re making the safe purchase by getting a Nexus device, you still might not be completely satisfied when it comes to OS updates. Of course, the Nexus devices do have a much better track record that other Android devices. Why is this so? It’s simple, really. Google has control over them.

Remember the Galaxy Nexus on Verizon? Or even the one on Sprint? If you do, then you’ll remember the public outcry that accompanied them when the time came for Android updates. While consumers bought the Galaxy Nexus for a pure, Android experience and fast updates, they were instead met with snail-slow updates and, shockingly, carrier bloatware.

Needless to say, many of those Galaxy Nexus owners left their respective carriers.

We can also look to other mainstream phones on the market to see examples of this. For example, the HTC One S. HTC sent everyone up in arms about the One S when they made the decision not to issue the One S with an update to Android 4.2. After just one update to Android 4.1, the phone was dead in the water. It was a sad fate for the surprising number of One S owners out there.

Fast forward to present day, and we can see that HTC may actually be learning their lesson from it. They’ve now promised that their flagship, the HTC One, will receive an update to Android 4.4 KitKat within 90 days. That’s surprisingly quick for HTC, considering their past record. But we’re not letting them off that easily; we need to see this come into play first.

More importantly, we need to see it take place on the carrier models of the One. While several have pledged to get the update rolled out in 90 days, we’ve seen similar situations in the past that have quickly turned into calamities when the updates get delayed.

But the solution to these slow updates boils down to one simple fact: Google needs to take control of updates.

Look at Motorola. Before their buyout by Google, they didn’t have a great history with timely updates. Since being bought out by Google, and the transformation into a different sort of company, we’re seeing much faster updates as well as nearly stock software with just a few very useful features thrown in.

We fully understand that half the beauty of Android is that the software is customizable, that you do have choice. But the complaint of slow updates is constantly regurgitated by consumers, and the best solution is to allow Google to have more control over the updates. Manufacturers can be slow with updates on their own, but they really get slowed down when the update gets to the carriers for testing.

It really wouldn’t be too hard and could actually provide a better experience for the consumer. Manufacturers might need to tone down their software a bit to make it slightly closer to stock Android, which in turn would give consumers a more consistent feel across Android devices. This toning down of software would also make it easier for Google and the manufacturer to quickly work together on an update.

I could be wrong, though. Maybe I am. Do you think so? Or do you think that this is a viable option that could really help consumers?

iOS: Google finally launched the iOS version its Play Music app today. The app includes support for playing your entire music library, as well as any songs from Google's library if you have the All Access subscription. The catch: you can't buy music directly from the app.

While it's a bit of a bummer, you're still able to buy individual tracks online and stream or download them to your iOS device once they're added to your library. It's a nuisance, but you at least have access to all of the tracks you would on any other platform. The app also lacks the "I'm feeling lucky" radio station, but otherwise has near feature-parity with the Android version. It even includes support for streaming to a Chromecast unit.

Google Play Music | iTunes App Store

The PS4 is a lovely gaming kit. It's sleek. Monolithic. And relatively small in comparison to the Xbox One. Sony did its 4th generation console right. iFixit found in its teardown that the gaming system is nearly as beautiful on the inside as it is on the out. But that shouldn't be a big surprise. It's a Sony product and Sony knows how to build things. However, iFixit did find something somewhat shocking: The latest PlayStation is very user serviceable. On iFixit's scale of 1 to 10, the PS4 scored an 8 meaning most users can expect to rip the system open and tinker away. Most importantly, the hard drive is very easy to access, giving owners options to upgrade to a larger or faster option. The hardest thing to service, per iFixit, is apparently the fan which is buried deep the system's innards. iFixit and others have yet to teardown the upcoming Xbox One. That should be in the coming days. Hopefully Microsoft designed it with the same thought as the Xbox 360E, the last model of its generation. That model was simple to open up. In fact, all of Microsoft's gaming systems from the start have been trivial to crack open and tinker around. The original Xbox's modability was a significant factor in its widespread adoption. Let's hope Microsoft hasn't forgotten that. With the gaming world entering the 7th generation, there is hope that hardware makers, namely Sony and Microsoft, have learned from past mistakes and gamers shouldn't have to fear a red or yellow light of death caused by shoddy hardware design.

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Android: mrQuery makes launching applications, dialing contacts, or just searching as simple as typing the first two letters of the app, person, or item you're looking for. Type "Gm" and the app will launch Gmail immediately, from any other app or view. It's like a text launcher for your Android phone.

Once installed, mrQuery waits until you need it, and when you do, it opens over your current app—you don't have to switch apps or close your running app to use it. Just tap home and mrQuery pops up. Tap home again and you'll go back to your default launcher. After two letters it'll immediately go to call a contact with those letters in their name or launch the app name you're typing. If there's a conflict, like two names that begin the same, or an app and a name, it'll display options and you can pick the action you want.

mrQuery is a bit like previously mentionedConjure, in that you start typing what you're looking for (a la Launchy or Alfred on the desktop) and the app responds instantly. It's also similar to the built-in Google Search widget, although it has the ability to auto-launch apps and auto-call people as you type, and it persists across applications without you having to tap home to get to it. Plus, mrQuery still works if you've trimmed back some of Google Now's access for better performance.

mrQuery is available for free at Google Play. Hit the link below to grab it, or read more about it.

mrQuery (Free) | Google Play

The Chinese government today announced that it will ease its longstanding one-child per household population policy, as part of a sweeping set of domestic reforms. According to the Xinhua News Agency, the new policy will allow couples to have two children if either of the two parents was an only child. Under the previous policy, couples in some cities could only have two children if both of the parents were only children.

The country's one-chid policy was originally implemented in 1979 as part of an effort to curb population growth in urban areas. The Chinese government has long stood by the law despite appeals from human rights groups, though reports began circulating this summer that the regime was considering a change. The...

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To prevent movie piracy, theaters nowadays are becoming more secure than some airports.

During pre-release screenings and premieres employees are often equipped with night-vision goggles and instructed to closely monitor movie goers. In some cases members of the public are instructed to hand over all recording-capable devices including phones, or even their candy.

While these measures are not always appreciated by the average movie goer they appear to have had some effect, as so-called “CAM” releases are becoming more rare. Perhaps motivated by this success, the MPAA has now updated its “Best Practices to Prevent Film Theft” guide for movie theaters.

In the revised guide the MPAA has stripped the billions of dollars in claimed losses that were included previously, but stresses that illegal camcording remains a significant problem. The movie industry group therefore advises theater owners to strictly prohibit the use of equipment that can record audio, video, or even take photographs.

“The MPAA recommends that theaters adopt a Zero Tolerance policy that prohibits the video or audio recording and the taking of photographs of any portion of a movie,” MPAA states.

The best practices now also clarify that when a suspect individual is spotted, theater employees should take immediate action. Even when in doubt, the local police should be notified as soon as possible.

“Theater managers should immediately alert law enforcement authorities whenever they suspect prohibited activity is taking place. Do not assume that a cell phone or digital camera is being used to take still photographs and not a full-length video recording.”

“Let the proper authorities determine what laws may have been violated and what enforcement action should be taken.”

The MPAA further stresses that all possible recording equipment locations in the theater should be considered, including cup holders. In addition, employees should be alert on possible concealed recording equipment, as often seen in the movies.

“Movie thieves are very ingenious when it comes to concealing cameras. It may be as simple as placing a coat or hat over the camera, or as innovative as a specially designed concealment device (e.g., a small camera built into eyeglass frames or a camera built into the lid of a beverage container).”

While it’s not a new recommendation, the MPAA also notes that movie theater employees must be wary of co-workers who invite friends into the theater, as these may be up to no good.

“Does one member of your staff frequently have ‘friends’ joining them at the theater at odd times? Look for non-employees coming or going out of the projectionist’s booth or those arriving at odd hours claiming to be ‘friends’ of an employee or manager,” MPAA writes.

The MPAA adds that even third-party security firms should be carefully vetted before they are hired for a job, as there may be rogue agents embedded in these teams.

While all forms of camcording are a problem for the movie industry, the most stringent security procedures should be applied for pre-release screenings.

For these events, theater owners are advised to post signs in- and outside the theater explaining that people who record movies “will be prosecuted.”

Pre-release screenings are also events where night vision binoculars should be used to inspect movie-goers. In addition, “low light security measures” may also have to be deployed to augment security. The MPAA doesn’t explain what these measures entail, but they were not mentioned in the previous guide.

“If your theater maintains night vision devices or low light binoculars, please employ these during the screening in the darkened auditorium,” MPAA writes.

“In the event that MPAA Investigators have been requested to augment the theater security for the event, additional low light security measures may be implemented.”

Finally, movie theater employees can score themselves a $500 reward for catching a movie pirate. This Take Action! Reward was introduced a decade ago and is meant to motivate personnel to be more vigilant.

How many of these movie pirate bounties have been claimed since is unknown.

The latest version of MPAA’s “Best Practices to Prevent Film Theft” is available here, including an application for the Take Action! Reward.

Pre-release screening guidelines

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

In an excellent editorial, Michael Masnick explains what's so nefarious about the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- the secretive trade treaty whose IP chapter leaked yesterday. As Masnick explains, the worst aspect of this treaty is that it locks in all of our present, overreaching copyright rules, effectively making it impossible for Congress and the Copyright Office to continue their present work on modernizing copyright for the digital age, and ensuring that they can never do so in future:

It's a lie in two different ways. First, there are multiple provisions in here that will absolutely require changes to US law. We'll discuss a few in other posts, but what's much more nefarious and downright obnoxious, is that this would lock in a variety of really bad copyright policies, making it nearly impossible for Congress to go back and change them. And that's a real issue, because, as we've been discussing, Congress is actually discussing copyright reform again. The head of the US Copyright Office, Maria Pallante, has proposed a bunch of changes to copyright law (some good, some bad), and astoundingly, just as Congress is at least trying to have the discussion about whether or not those and other ideas make sense, the USTR is looking to effectively tie everyone's hands by saying "these things cannot be changed," including many of the reforms that Pallante has directly proposed.

That's really quite incredible if you think about it. On the one hand, you have the very head of the Copyright Office suggesting some reforms, and you have Congress beginning the process to explore that. On the other, you have the USTR totally ignoring the sole power of Congress to make copyright and patent law, and effectively saying "you cannot make any of the suggested reforms." And then the USTR has the gall to ask Congress to give up its power to challenge specific provisions in the agreement? While we're concerned about the Congressional copyright reform process, at least it's being done in the open. The USTR has been hashing out the plan in TPP in total secrecy for years.

Who the hell does the USTR think they are that they can flat out override the Constitution and the Congressional process, and effectively block them in and stop any meaningful attempt at copyright reform? All done via a process driven entirely by a few special interests? It's anti-democracy. It's pure corporate cronyism by the worst cronies around.

The Most Nefarious Part Of The TPP Proposal: Making Copyright Reform Impossible

In recent years the UK has become the easiest country in the world in which to have a website censored on copyright grounds.

With several successful court orders in hand it is now a mere formality to have a torrent site or streaming portal blocked under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

Today another round of blocks was announced in a case initiated by the Motion Picture Association (MPA). The High Court ruled in favor of the major movie studios who had filed demands for six major Internet providers to block subscriber access to the streaming sites TubePlus and SolarMovie.

As in previous cases the ISPs did not contest the case in court, while the sites in question were not given express opportunity to defend themselves. This means that both sites will be blocked by BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk in the near future.

TubePlus and SolarMovie are two of the most popular streaming sites and are ranked as the 558th and 346th most-visited websites in the UK respectively. Worldwide the streaming portals are estimated to have dozens of millions of visitors every month.

UK movie industry anti-piracy group FACT is happy with the ruling, which they say will help to protect the work of rightsholders. According to FACT both TubePlus and SolarMovie were contacted, but the sites repeatedly ignored takedown requests from copyright holders.

“FACT’s members create exciting entertainment for audiences of all ages and we work to protect the jobs of tens of thousands of people in the UK and the investments made in new content,” a FACT spokesman told TorrentFreak.

“All of the sites in recent actions have been asked to comply with UK and international law and have refused to do so.”

Solarmovie.so

The movie studios are not the only ones cheering on the new verdict. Christine Payne of the UK actor’s union Equity described the ruling as “a great step forward in the fight to ensure creators’ rights are respected online.”

“These websites steal creative works for their own, untaxed, profit whilst paying nothing back to creators themselves. It is right and proper that legal, proportionate action be taken to tackle these sites to help turn the tide of widespread online copyright infringement,” Payne added.

The UK Pirate Party and several civil rights groups have been more critical of the ever-growing list of banned sites. In particular, they are worried about the lack of transparency as most court orders are not made public.

“In the Pirate Party we have always maintained that website blocking is dangerous. Where does this end?” UK Pirate Party leader Loz Kaye previously told TorrentFreak.

FACT told us that an end to site blocking requests is not in sight, on the contrary in fact. Alongside other entertainment industry groups they will continue to file new cases against “pirate” sites.

“Sites that continually allow infringing material to be hosted, linked or streamed can be in no doubt that sanctions will be taken against them,” FACT explained.

And so the game of Whack-A-Mole will continue, and undoubtedly more websites will be added to the country’s unofficial ban list in the months to come.

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

Companies are trying as hard as they can to convince us that smartphone-based payment systems are the future, but we have seen little thus far to convince us that this new technology will break out anytime soon. Tap-to-pay smartphone solutions require retailers to update their point of sale (POS) terminals, and mobile payment solutions providers are having trouble coming up with a solid system that works across platforms. On top of everything else, people haven't yet shown that they're comfortable replacing standard credit cards with a smartphone-based solution. But what if there were a middle ground? What if an innovative solution came along that required no new POS equipment and could instantly be used anywhere credit cards are accepted? What if that solution looked as familiar as a credit card but still let users empty their wallets of all current credit cards, debit cards, gift cards and membership cards? One San Francisco-based startup is now looking to make this seemingly impossible middle ground a reality.

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Google today released its latest transparency report with a stronger message for its users and the United States government, and more detailed reporting about the types of surveillance US authorities use to obtain information. In a blog post announcing the report, Google imitated the government's infamous black marker of redaction for secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests, noting that "the US government contents that we cannot share this information." Google's latest report reveals that governments have more than doubled requests for user data since 2009, not including the secret requests that it is prohibited from discussing.

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EASA follows the FAA in allowing gate-to-gate use of personal electronic devices

Following the recent FAA rulings in the U.S. the European equivalent, the EASA, has also now approved the use of personal electronic devices for all stages of flight. Providing everything is turned into airplane mode during travel, you'll be able to use devices such as your Android smartphones and tablets gate-to-gate once airlines have adopted it. 

Bulkier items such as laptops will need to be stowed during taxiing, takeoff and landing, but smaller devices can remain in your hand and in use. The guidelines are expected to be published by the end of November, and here's hoping the European airlines adopt them with speed afterwards. 

Source: EASA via The Verge