Last articles. http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/img/logo.png 2013-05-20T03:20:44-06:00 Zend_Feed_Writer http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/

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2013-05-20T02:01:31-06:00 2013-05-20T02:01:31-06:00 http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/article2275-Top-10-Most-Pirated-Movies-of-The-Week admin

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2013-05-19T14:57:30-06:00 2013-05-19T14:57:30-06:00 http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/article2274-Hollywood-Studios-Censor-Pirate-Bay-Documentary admin

As we learned (though were hardly surprised by) this week, the MPAA doesn't take kindly to the suggestion that it should have to consider fair use when sending DMCA notices. The irony of this was not lost on anyone, and indeed both of our most insightful comments of the week came from that post, both of them making the same point. First up, Tim K's opening salvo:

Difficult for MPAA to differentiate between infringing and non-infringing material, but everyone else should still easily be able to know immediately what's infringing.

And not far behind, reinforcements from Jesse:

Interesting. If it's ISPs magically waving away infringement, it's really easy to figure out infringement from non-infringement. If they have to do it, it's too hard.

It's certainly a point that bears repetition. But there's another important point to be made on that same story, in response to the MPAA's claims that they need to send millions of DMCA notices. So our first editor's choice goes to Rikuo for covering that base:

No they don't. There's a myriad of other tactics they can use. There is no requirement that they absolutely, positively have to send DMCA notices.

For our second editor's choice, we head to our post about Eric Holder, who is also making bold statements about intellectual property. This time, it's the idea that piracy funds terrorism, which made a different Eric (I assume) wonder what exactly he's saying:

So if I understand this correctly:

1) Infringement is all over the place, thus making it difficult to monetize content, which leads to the need for these laws
2) Terrorist are able to fund themselves via monetizing this infringing
3) Which leads to the final logic that terrorist are able to monetize content that is available everywhere better than the producers of the content???

On the funny side, we've got a pair of winners from two different posts about major players in the Prenda saga. First up, when we asked whether Paul Duffy's wife admitted that he was engaged in interstate extortion, Arsik Vek anticipated Duffy's response:

Duffy's next comment: "I'm not sure who that woman is. She may or may not be my wife, but I have no direct knowledge of any relationship."

That would be true to form. Up next, in response to Mark Lutz's ongoing evasion in the face of scrutiny, an anonymous commenter was inspired to put Prenda's tenacity to good use:

You know, I've always wanted to dig to China. I think I'll hire these guys.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with our post about the new and disappointing live streaming service from Disney's ABC. An anonymous commenter summed up the likely customer response to this lacklustre offering:

"Where can I sign back up for my monthly $50-80 cable bill so I have access to these wonderful services"

-No one. Ever.

And finally, since we've been oh so serious and scathing today, we'll finish things off with something a bit sillier. In response to our post about people not turning off their devices when they fly, one anonymous commenter dissented, but for pragmatic reasons:

I generally do. I just don't have the coordination to flap my arms and mess with my smartphone at the same time.

This is the way the post ends: not with a bang but a groan. See you tomorrow, folks!
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2013-05-19T13:00:00-06:00 2013-05-19T13:00:00-06:00 http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/article2273-Funniest-Most-Insightful-Comments-Of-The-Week-At-Techdirt admin

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2013-05-19T05:27:41-06:00 2013-05-19T05:27:41-06:00 http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/article2272-RapidShare-Fires-75-of-its-Staff-After-Rogue-Site-Revamp-Bites admin

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2013-05-18T16:26:03-06:00 2013-05-18T16:26:03-06:00 http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/article2270-Canadian-Police-and-Government-Caught-Pirating-Movies-and-TV-Shows admin

Some might expect that my favorite posts would be all about Prenda, but no — I have wider interests than fighting ethically handicapped lawyers. Still I'm quite happy that copyright trolling disease that has penetrated the legal system is finally gaining attention from the general public. Techdirt, together with ArsTechnica and TorrentFreak (and, recently, Popehat), have been pivotal in this respect.

The only Prenda-related post I want to specifically recommend is about the ISPs' appeal over former RIAA lobbyist judge allowing Prenda to get info on over 1,000 John Does. This post features an amicus curiae brief filed by four respected advocate organizations: EFF, ACLU, Public Citizen and Public Knowledge. To date, this is one of the most comprehensive and beautiful briefs on the topic, a must read to anyone who follows the copyright trolling phenomenon.

For some reason, the story I remember the most is the one about the North Carolina politicians and car dealers trying to outlaw the direct sales of Tesla cars in their state. It makes me sad and angry when special interest groups, mostly incumbents, attempt to derail progress: not that it is unnatural or unexpected, but the BS smuggled as public concern is always unbearable to hear.

It is not much better when certain groups try to widen revenue streams quietly. The story about the Florida Department of Transportation doing it at the expense of public safety — by decreasing yellow traffic light intervals (to increase the number of red-light tickets) — is, unfortunately, also not unexpected.

Good news is that the most innovative area — the Internet — is largely immune to the tricks that authorities can forcefully impose on citizens. It is mind-boggling that certain power structures can't grasp the futility of trying to put the cat back in the bag when it comes to the digital world. This week we watched how the government tried to suppress the dissemination of the first fully 3D-printed gun blueprint using some "export regulations." "Export-import of digital goods" concept is irreversibly dead in the Internet age.

Meanwhile the incumbent entertainment gatekeepers continue their delusional fight against the Internet — pretending to fight piracy, while study after study (this time commissioned by the UK government) finds that top downloaders are top spenders. The following stories remind us one more time that the collateral damage in this war — the civil liberties — is truly an international concern. In the USA, the MPAA thinks that considering fair use before filing a DMCA takedowns is a crazy idea. In the UK, the country's recording industry, dwelling on the success of the last year censorship, plans a new wave of blockades — over two dozen new victims (including a relatively good player Grooveshark) — all without trial and conviction. And the Germany's GEMA does not want to yield its status of the worst collection society in the world.

Fortunately, the new generation does not sit idle. I was moved by the news of Peter Sunde, of The Pirate Bay & Flattr, planning a run for the EU parliament.

To finish on a lighter note, read about a pathetic and sloppy usage of Photoshop by the Church of Scientology: you'll have a good chuckle.

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2013-05-18T13:00:00-06:00 2013-05-18T13:00:00-06:00 http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/article2269-Sophisticatedjanedoe-FightCopyrightTrolls-Favorite-Techdirt-Posts-Of-The-Week admin

I don't know about you, but I've had a few too many experiencing having to try to inflate an air mattress of some kind or another, and realizing what a freaking total pain it is using regular valves (not to mention the inevitable annoying emptying process as well). So I have to say that the Windcatcher project definitely piqued my curiosity. I don't understand the mechanism behind it, but it certainly looks like an air mattress that you can fill with 4 or 5 breaths — and all without having to put your mouth on anything. It looks kind of like magic, so check out the video.



These guys still have a bit of a way to go on the funding front, having raised only about a quarter of the $50,000 they're seeking, but the product definitely has that neat design factor going for it.



There's been something of a hipster revival in pinhole cameras lately, it seems, but the ONDU Pinhole cameras are definitely the nicest design I've ever seen. A nice wooden box with no exposed screws. A backplate that's held on by magnets. It just looks cool. Also, bonus points for the cool music in the video (apparently this is the musician.



This project has already surged past its goals, so it's definitely going to get funded, and with another 25 days to go, it'll likely end up much, much higher.



Finally, there are times when someone designs something and you wonder why no one else has done it before — or even why such things aren't common. That was the feeling I got after seeing the Nuplug, which is basically an extension cord/surge protector/outlet that attaches to furniture. So, rather than having your outlets on the wall and behind furniture, you can connect them in a more convenient way. Given how much stuff folks are charging all the time these days, I could definitely see how this could be handy for many people.



The one thing holding me back on this one, frankly, is that it's a bit on the ugly side — in that it really stands out. Seems like something a little more subtle would be cooler. Maybe future iterations. This one also has a pretty ambitious $75,000 goal, and they're only a little past halfway there with 18 days to go.




That's all for this week...Permalink | Comments | Email This Story






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2013-05-18T10:00:00-06:00 2013-05-18T10:00:00-06:00 http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/article2268-Awesome-Stuff-Cool-Product-Designs admin

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2013-05-18T06:11:52-06:00 2013-05-18T06:11:52-06:00 http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/article2266-Fighting-Censorship-Proxies-Gear-Up-to-Unblock-More-Torrent-Sites admin

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2013-05-18T05:13:42-06:00 2013-05-18T05:13:42-06:00 http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/article2267-Efemr-Lets-You-Set-Tweets-to-Self-Destruct admin

It's sad to note how collective humanity has done an ostrich on the warnings about the machines. Still the NFL exists, robbing us of our best and brightest, who will no longer be available for the coming war with SkyNET. Conferences on what to do about the surely coming robot horde have produced little in the way of a path forward and have gone relatively unreported in any case. Due to this, we know very little about what form the non-existent threat of terminator-like metal monsters will take. Will they simply wage war against us? Will they syphon our body heat for energy? Will they farm our skin and dance around in it to Goodbye Horses, like some kind of graphite Buffalo Bill?

Not according to Rice University professor Moshe Vardi, who claims that they have a far more terrifying plan in store: displacing the human workforce.


Pictured: A Rice University professor in the near future Image source: CC BY 2.0

According to Vardi, sometime around the year 2045, you won't have a job any longer because the robots will have taken it away from you.

In recent writings, Vardi traces the evolution of the idea that artificial intelligence may one day surpass human intelligence, from Turing to Kurzweil, and considers the recent rate of progress. Although early predictions proved too aggressive, in the space of 15 years we’ve gone from Deep Blue beating Kasparov at chess to self-driving cars and Watson beating Jeopardy champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Extrapolating into the future, Vardi thinks it’s reasonable to believe intelligent machines may one day replace human workers almost entirely and in the process put millions out of work permanently.

Well, looking back through the history of technological progress, you can certainly see his point. And once you've seen that point, you can laugh at it. And once you've laughed at it, you can call his local police station and request that they remove any science fiction movies from his home by force, because he's clearly seen too many of them.

The problem with thinking that artificial intelligence is going to replace us in the workforce is two-fold. First, it cheaply ignores the impact every other form of technological progress has had thus far. Robots are used on assembly lines, yet there's no drastic net loss of jobs. When the automobile was invented, it isn't as though the buggy whip makers simply died off in unemployed starvation. There are other jobs to be had, most often created as a direct result of the advance in technology. Assembly line workers become machinists. Buggy whip makers go to work for the auto companies. There can be pain in the market in the short term as it is disrupted, but on a long enough timeline everything seems to even back out.

The second problem is the failure to recognize that people value some products and services provided by our fellow meat-sacks. Can auto-attendant systems handle phone duties? Sure, but there are tons of companies that specifically advertise the concept of customers being able to talk to a "real" person. Can machines make rugs? Yup, yet there's a huge market in hand-woven rugs out there. And the service industries rely heavily on personality. A machine might be able to serve me my beer at my local watering hole, but will it listen to me complain about my job if I'm having a crappy day? Will it be able to offer me an opinion on which wine is the best on the menu? And, as the article notes, what if any workforce disruption that does occur is desirable?

Perhaps in the future, while some of us work hard to build and program super-intelligent machines, others will work hard to entertain, theorize, philosophize, and make uniquely human creative works, maybe even pair with machines to accomplish these things. These may seem like niche careers for the few and talented. But at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, jobs of the mind in general were niche careers.

I call dibs on being the new Socrates.

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2013-05-17T20:39:00-06:00 2013-05-17T20:39:00-06:00 http://www.dtsleech.com/wiki/article2265-Rice-University-Professor-SkyNET-s-Gonna-Take-Ur-Jerbs admin