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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 140 declined, 19 accepted (159 total, 11.95% accepted)

Piracy

Submission + - Game of Thrones Crowned Most Pirated TV-Show of the Season (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "With nearly 4 million downloads per episode, the HBO hit series Game of Thrones is the most pirated TV-show of the season. Worldwide hype combined with restricted availability are the key ingredients for the staggering number of unauthorized downloads. How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory complete the top three, albeit with significantly fewer downloads than the chart topper.

As predicted, Game of Thrones has the honor of becoming the most downloaded TV-show of the spring season.

While there are many reasons for people to download TV-shows through BitTorrent, airing delays and HBO’s choice not to make it widely available online are two of the top reasons.

Game of Thrones is particularly popular in Australia, where people have to wait a week after the U.S. release comes out. Nevertheless, even in the U.S. hundreds and thousands are downloading the show for free, although many would love to pay for it if HBO offered a standalone HBO GO subscription."
Piracy

Submission + - Who's Pirating Game of Thrones, And Why? (torrentfreak.com) 1

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "With over 3 million downloads per episode, the HBO hit series Game of Thrones is without doubt the most pirated TV-show of the season. Data gathered by TorrentFreak shows that most of the pirates come from Australia, while London tops the list of pirate cities. But why have these people turned to BitTorrent?

In a few hours a new episode of Game of Thrones will appear on BitTorrent, and a few days later between 3 and 4 million people will download this unofficial release.

Statistics gathered by TorrentFreak reveal that more people are downloading the show compared to last year, when it came in as the second most downloaded TV-show of 2011. The number of weekly downloads worldwide is about equal to the estimated viewers on HBO in the U.S., but why?

One of the prime reasons for the popularity among pirates is the international delay in airing. In Australia, for example, fans of the show have to wait a week before they can see the latest episode. So it’s hardly a surprise that some people are turning to BitTorrent instead.

And indeed, if we look at the top countries where Game of Thrones is downloaded, Australia comes out on top with 10.1% of all downloads (based on one episode).

But delays are just part of the problem. The fact that the show is only available to those who pay for an HBO subscription doesn’t help either. This explains why hundreds of thousands of people from the U.S. prefer to use BitTorrent."
Security

Submission + - White House Hires a New Cybersecurity Boss (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Cybersecurity and the government have been a volitile combination lately, with proposed bills like SOPA, PIPA, and the still-up-in-the-air CISPA at the center of on-and-off internet outrage. So it's kind of a big deal when the White House replaces its chief of cybersecurity affairs.

Last week, longtime chief Howard Schmidt stepped down. He's replaced by Michael Daniel, who's been in the Office of Management and Budget's national security division for 17 years. What does that mean for the future of the cybersecurity issue? Probably that we can expect his knowledge of the intelligence community to play a part in not just tracking down hackers, but determining the lines that need to be crossed with future SOPA-like bills. So while this sounds like a relatively nondescript appointment, Daniel will almost definitely be a major player the next time someone comes for your internet."
United States

Submission + - F.D.A. Panel Backs First Rapid, Take Home H.I.V. Test (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "American consumers may soon be able to test themselves for the virus that causes AIDS in the privacy of their own homes, after a panel of experts on Tuesday recommended approval of the first rapid, over-the-counter HIV test.

The 17 members of the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted unanimously that the benefits of the OraQuick HIV test outweigh its potential risks for consumers. While the test, which uses a mouth swab to return a result in 20 minutes, does not appear to be as accurate as professionally-administered diagnostics, panelists said it could provide an important way to expand HIV testing.

The FDA will make its final decision on whether to approve the product later this year, weighing the opinion of the panel."
Security

Submission + - Fearmongering About Cyberwar And Cybersecurity Is Working: American Public Very, (techdirt.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Well, it looks like all the fearmongering about hackers shutting down electrical grids and making planes fall from the sky is working. No matter that there's no evidence of any actual risk, or that the only real issue is if anyone is stupid enough to actually connect such critical infrastructure to the internet (the proper response to which is: take it off the internet), fear is spreading. Of course, this is mostly due to the work of a neat combination of ex-politicians/now lobbyists working for defense contractors who stand to make a ton of money from the panic — enabled by politicians who seem to have no shame in telling scary bedtime stories that have no basis in reality.

But it's all working. And, by working, I mean scaring the public unnecessarily. As reported by Wired, a new survey from Unisys finds that Americans are more worried about cybersecurity threats than terrorism, and they seem pretty worried about those threats. When asked about which security issues were the highest priority, survey respondents noted:"

Submission + - LulzSec member pleads not guilty to charges he hacked Stratfor website (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "A former LulzSec member has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he hacked into the servers of global intelligence company Stratfor and stole credit card data and personal details of 860,000 of its clients.

Jeremy Hammond entered the plea on Monday during a brief hearing in US District Court in Manhattan, the Associated Press reported. He's been held in federal custody since an initial court appearance in Chicago in early March, when federal prosecutors named him as a lieutenant of LulzSec ringleader Hector Xavier "Sabu" Monsegur. There was no request for Hammond to be released on bail during Monday's hearing, according to the AP report."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Funded Startup Aims to Kill BitTorrent Traffic (torrentfreak.com) 3

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "The Russian based “Pirate Pay” startup is promising the entertainment industry a pirate-free future. With help from Microsoft, the developers have built a system that claims to track and shut down the distribution of copyrighted works on BitTorrent. Their first project, carried out in collaboration with Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures, successfully stopped tens of thousands of downloads.

Hollywood, software giants and the major music labels see BitTorrent as one of the largest threats to their business.

Billions in revenue are lost each year, they claim. But not for long if the Russian based startup “Pirate Pay” has its way. The company has developed a technology which allows them to attack existing BitTorrent swarms, making it impossible for people to share files."
Apple

Submission + - Apple gives in: iPad 3 drops '4G' tag to avoid lawsuits (zdnet.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "In silence and without comment, Apple has quietly dropped the “4G” tag from its new iPad 3 tablet in favour of the legal-friendly “Cellular” term.

The Cupertino-based tablet maker had faced litigation in Australia and criticism from a number of European consumer groups after it was found the 4G-capable devices would not work outside the United States and Canada, despite no change in global marketing.

Apple’s U.K. and Australia online retail stores have both replaced the “4G” tag in favour of “Cellular” to appease both consumer groups, Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and the UK’s Advertisement Standards Authority (ASA)."
Censorship

Submission + - Pirate Bay ‘Censorship’ Judge is Corrupt, Claims Pirate Party Founde (torrentfreak.com) 1

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "This week yet another court order was handed down in Europe with the aim of censoring The Pirate Bay. The ruling forbids the Dutch Pirate Party from not only running a direct proxy, but also telling people how to circumvent an earlier court ordered blockade. However, according to Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge, the judge in the case has a history of corruption relating to another file-sharing case he presided over in the Netherlands.

The Court of The Hague in the Netherlands has been particularly busy this work with Pirate Bay-related cases."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft to bring full Internet Explorer browsing to Xbox 360 with Kinect contr (theverge.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Microsoft is currently testing a modified version of Internet Explorer 9 on its Xbox 360 console, according to our sources. The Xbox 360 currently includes Bing voice search, but it's limited to media results. Microsoft's new Internet Explorer browser for Xbox will expand on this functionality to open up a full browser for the console. We are told that the browser will let Xbox users surf all parts of the web straight from their living rooms."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Congress: The TSA Is Wasting Hundreds Of Millions In Taxpayer Dollars (techdirt.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "File this under, 'Things we knew'.

The House Oversight Committee has come out with a report slamming the TSA for tremendous amounts of waste, specifically in the "deployment and storage" of its scanning equipment. Basically, it sounds like the TSA likes to go on giant spending sprees, buying up security equipment and then never, ever using it. A few data points...."
Communications

Submission + - Queen's Speech 2012 at-a-glance: Bill-by-bill (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "By far the most controversial bill discussed in The Queens speech today has to be the 'Draft Communications Bill' which will allow the police and intelligence agencies to collect data on communications, like texts and emails, flexible to changes in technology, such as the internet. This will apply UK wide.

The Queen's Speech has set out the government's legislative plans for the next year. Here are details of what is in it:"
Piracy

Submission + - The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Despite the widespread availability of pirated releases, The Avengers just scored a record-breaking $200 million opening weekend at the box office. While some are baffled to see that piracy failed to crush the movie’s profits, it’s really not that surprising. Claiming a camcorded copy of a movie seriously impacts box office attendance is the same as arguing that concert bootlegs stop people from seeing artists on stage."
Facebook

Submission + - Brazil retailer using Facebook likes on its clothing hangers (venturebeat.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Interesting use of social media in the real world.

The store, C&A, is putting ” real-time Likes” counters on its hangers in retail locations around Brazil. The Like data is taken from C&A’s Facebook page, where the company has listed its various wares for people to interact with. When a person Likes an item, that Like shows up on the hanger. It is meant to help customers with purchasing decisions. If they are unsure of one item, they can see how many people online think the product is a good buy."

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