Tag Archives: cam

CoderDojo Coolest Projects 2017

2017-06-22 Ben Nuttall

Post Syndicated from Ben Nuttall original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/coderdojo-coolest-projects-2017/

When I heard we were merging with CoderDojo, I was delighted. CoderDojo is a wonderful organisation with a spectacular community, and it’s going to be great to join forces with the team and work towards our common goal: making a difference to the lives of young people by making technology accessible to them.

You may remember that last year Philip and I went along to Coolest Projects, CoderDojo’s annual event at which their global community showcase their best makes. It was awesome! This year a whole bunch of us from the Raspberry Pi Foundation attended Coolest Projects with our new Irish colleagues, and as expected, the projects on show were as cool as can be.

This year’s coolest projects!

Young maker Benjamin demoed his brilliant RGB LED table tennis ball display for us, and showed off his brilliant project tutorial website codemakerbuddy.com, which he built with Python and Flask. [Click on any of the images to enlarge them.]

Next up, Aimee showed us a recipes app she’d made with the MIT App Inventor. It was a really impressive and well thought-out project.

This very successful OpenCV face detection program with hardware installed in a teddy bear was great as well:

Helen’s and Oly’s favourite project involved…live bees!

BEEEEEEEEEEES!

Its creator, 12-year-old Amy, said she wanted to do something to help the Earth. Her project uses various sensors to record data on the bee population in the hive. An adjacent monitor displays the data in a web interface:

Coolest robots

I enjoyed seeing lots of GPIO Zero projects out in the wild, including this robotic lawnmower made by Kevin and Zach:

Raspberry Pi Lawnmower

Kevin and Zach’s Raspberry Pi lawnmower project with Python and GPIO Zero, showed at CoderDojo Coolest Projects 2017

Philip’s favourite make was a Pi-powered robot you can control with your mind! According to the maker, Laura, it worked really well with Philip because he has no hair.

Philip Colligan on Twitter

This is extraordinary. Laura from @CoderDojo Romania has programmed a mind controlled robot using @Raspberry_Pi @coolestprojects

And here are some pictures of even more cool robots we saw:

Games, toys, activities

Oly and I were massively impressed with the work of Mogamad, Daniel, and Basheerah, who programmed a (borrowed) Amazon Echo to make a voice-controlled text-adventure game using Java and the Alexa API. They’ve inspired me to try something similar using the AIY projects kit and adventurelib!

Christopher Hill did a brilliant job with his Home Alone LEGO house. He used sensors to trigger lights and sounds to make it look like someone’s at home, like in the film. I should have taken a video – seeing it in action was great!

Meanwhile, the Northern Ireland Raspberry Jam group ran a DOTS board activity, which turned their area into a conductive paint hazard zone.

Creativity and ingenuity

We really enjoyed seeing so many young people collaborating, experimenting, and taking full advantage of the opportunity to make real projects. And we loved how huge the range of technologies in use was: people employed all manner of hardware and software to bring their ideas to life.

Philip Colligan on Twitter

Wow! Look at that room full of awesome young people. @coolestprojects #coolestprojects @CoderDojo

Congratulations to the Coolest Projects 2017 prize winners, and to all participants. Here are some of the teams that won in the different categories:

Take a look at the gallery of all winners over on Flickr.

The wow factor

Raspberry Pi co-founder and Foundation trustee Pete Lomas came along to the event as well. Here’s what he had to say:

It’s hard to describe the scale of the event, and photos just don’t do it justice. The first thing that hit me was the sheer excitement of the CoderDojo ninjas [the children attending Dojos]. Everyone was setting up for their time with the project judges, and their pure delight at being able to show off their creations was evident in both halls. Time and time again I saw the ninjas apply their creativity to help save the planet or make someone’s life better, and it’s truly exciting that we are going to help that continue and expand.

Even after 8 hours, enthusiasm wasn’t flagging – the awards ceremony was just brilliant, with ninjas high-fiving the winners on the way to the stage. This speaks volumes about the ethos and vision of the CoderDojo founders, where everyone is a winner just by being part of a community of worldwide friends. It was a brilliant introduction, and if this weekend was anything to go by, our merger certainly is a marriage made in Heaven.

Join this awesome community!

If all this inspires you as much as it did us, consider looking for a CoderDojo near you – and sign up as a volunteer! There’s plenty of time for young people to build up skills and start working on a project for next year’s event. Check out coolestprojects.com for more information.

The post CoderDojo Coolest Projects 2017 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

NSA Insider Security Post-Snowden

2017-06-22 Bruce Schneier

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/06/nsa_insider_sec.html

According to a recently declassified report obtained under FOIA, the NSA’s attempts to protect itself against insider attacks aren’t going very well:

The N.S.A. failed to consistently lock racks of servers storing highly classified data and to secure data center machine rooms, according to the report, an investigation by the Defense Department’s inspector general completed in 2016.

[…]

The agency also failed to meaningfully reduce the number of officials and contractors who were empowered to download and transfer data classified as top secret, as well as the number of “privileged” users, who have greater power to access the N.S.A.’s most sensitive computer systems. And it did not fully implement software to monitor what those users were doing.

In all, the report concluded, while the post-Snowden initiative — called “Secure the Net” by the N.S.A. — had some successes, it “did not fully meet the intent of decreasing the risk of insider threats to N.S.A. operations and the ability of insiders to exfiltrate data.”

Marcy Wheeler comments:

The IG report examined seven of the most important out of 40 “Secure the Net” initiatives rolled out since Snowden began leaking classified information. Two of the initiatives aspired to reduce the number of people who had the kind of access Snowden did: those who have privileged access to maintain, configure, and operate the NSA’s computer systems (what the report calls PRIVACs), and those who are authorized to use removable media to transfer data to or from an NSA system (what the report calls DTAs).

But when DOD’s inspectors went to assess whether NSA had succeeded in doing this, they found something disturbing. In both cases, the NSA did not have solid documentation about how many such users existed at the time of the Snowden leak. With respect to PRIVACs, in June 2013 (the start of the Snowden leak), “NSA officials stated that they used a manually kept spreadsheet, which they no longer had, to identify the initial number of privileged users.” The report offered no explanation for how NSA came to no longer have that spreadsheet just as an investigation into the biggest breach thus far at NSA started. With respect to DTAs, “NSA did not know how many DTAs it had because the manually kept list was corrupted during the months leading up to the security breach.”

There seem to be two possible explanations for the fact that the NSA couldn’t track who had the same kind of access that Snowden exploited to steal so many documents. Either the dog ate their homework: Someone at NSA made the documents unavailable (or they never really existed). Or someone fed the dog their homework: Some adversary made these lists unusable. The former would suggest the NSA had something to hide as it prepared to explain why Snowden had been able to walk away with NSA’s crown jewels. The latter would suggest that someone deliberately obscured who else in the building might walk away with the crown jewels. Obscuring that list would be of particular value if you were a foreign adversary planning on walking away with a bunch of files, such as the set of hacking tools the Shadow Brokers have since released, which are believed to have originated at NSA.

Read the whole thing. Securing against insiders, especially those with technical access, is difficult, but I had assumed the NSA did more post-Snowden.

Three Men Sentenced Following £2.5m Internet Piracy Case

2017-06-22 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/three-men-sentenced-following-2-5m-internet-piracy-case-170622/

While legal action against low-level individual file-sharers is extremely rare in the UK, the country continues to pose a risk for those engaged in larger-scale infringement.

That is largely due to the activities of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit and private anti-piracy outfits such as the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). Investigations are often a joint effort which can take many years to complete, but the outcomes can often involve criminal sentences.

That was the profile of another Internet piracy case that concluded in London this week. It involved three men from the UK, Eric Brooks, 43, from Bolton, Mark Valentine, 44, from Manchester, and Craig Lloyd, 33, from Wolverhampton.

The case began when FACT became aware of potentially infringing activity back in February 2011. The anti-piracy group then investigated for more than a year before handing the case to police in March 2012.

On July 4, 2012, officers from City of London Police arrested Eric Brooks’ at his home in Bolton following a joint raid with FACT. Computer equipment was seized containing evidence that Brooks had been running a Netherlands-based server hosting more than £100,000 worth of pirated films, music, games, software and ebooks.

According to police, a spreadsheet on Brooks’ computer revealed he had hundreds of paying customers, all recruited from online forums. Using PayPal or utilizing bank transfers, each paid money to access the server. Police mentioned no group or site names in information released this week.

“Enquiries with PayPal later revealed that [Brooks] had made in excess of £500,000 in the last eight years from his criminal business and had in turn defrauded the film and TV industry alone of more than £2.5 million,” police said.

“As his criminal enterprise affected not only the film and TV but the wider entertainment industry including music, games, books and software it is thought that he cost the wider industry an amount much higher than £2.5 million.”

On the same day police arrested Brooks, Mark Valentine’s home in Manchester had a similar unwelcome visit. A day later, Craig Lloyd’s home in Wolverhampton become the third target for police.

Computer equipment was seized from both addresses which revealed that the pair had been paying for access to Brooks’ servers in order to service their own customers.

“They too had used PayPal as a means of taking payment and had earned thousands of pounds from their criminal actions; Valentine gaining £34,000 and Lloyd making over £70,000,” police revealed.

But after raiding the trio in 2012, it took more than four years to charge the men. In a feature common to many FACT cases, all three were charged with Conspiracy to Defraud rather than copyright infringement offenses. All three men pleaded guilty before trial.

On Monday, the men were sentenced at Inner London Crown Court. Brooks was sentenced to 24 months in prison, suspended for 12 months and ordered to complete 140 hours of unpaid work.

Valentine and Lloyd were each given 18 months in prison, suspended for 12 months. Each was ordered to complete 80 hours unpaid work.

Detective Constable Chris Glover, who led the investigation for the City of London Police, welcomed the sentencing.

“The success of this investigation is a result of co-ordinated joint working between the City of London Police and FACT. Brooks, Valentine and Lloyd all thought that they were operating under the radar and doing something which they thought was beyond the controls of law enforcement,” Glover said.

“Brooks, Valentine and Lloyd will now have time in prison to reflect on their actions and the result should act as deterrent for anyone else who is enticed by abusing the internet to the detriment of the entertainment industry.”

While even suspended sentences are a serious matter, none of the men will see the inside of a cell if they meet the conditions of their sentence for the next 12 months. For a case lasting four years involving such large sums of money, that is probably a disappointing result for FACT and the police.

Nevertheless, the men won’t be allowed to enjoy the financial proceeds of their piracy, if indeed any money is left. City of London Police say the trio will be subject to a future confiscation hearing to seize any proceeds of crime.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Opus 1.2 released

2017-06-21 ris

Post Syndicated from ris original https://lwn.net/Articles/726134/rss

Version 1.2 of the Opus audio codec has been released. “For music encoding Opus has already been shown to out-perform other audio codecs at both 64 kb/s and 96 kb/s. We originally thought that 64 kb/s was near the lowest bitrate at which Opus could be useful for streaming stereo music. However, with variable bitrate (VBR) improvements in Opus 1.1, suddenly 48 kb/s became a realistic target. Opus 1.2 continues on the path to lowering the bitrate limit. Music at 48 kb/s is now quite usable and while the artefacts are generally audible, they are rarely annoying. Even more, we’ve actually been pushing all the way to fullband stereo at just 32 kb/s!

Most of the music encoding quality improvements in 1.2 don’t come from big new features (like tonality analysis that got added to version 1.1), but from many small changes that all add up.”

MPAA & RIAA Demand Tough Copyright Standards in NAFTA Negotiations

2017-06-21 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-riaa-demand-tough-copyright-standards-in-nafta-negotiations-170621/

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Canada, and Mexico was negotiated more than 25 years ago. With a quarter of a decade of developments to contend with, the United States wants to modernize.

“While our economy and U.S. businesses have changed considerably over that period, NAFTA has not,” the government says.

With this in mind, the US requested comments from interested parties seeking direction for negotiation points. With those comments now in, groups like the MPAA and RIAA have been making their positions known. It’s no surprise that intellectual property enforcement is high on the agenda.

“Copyright is the lifeblood of the U.S. motion picture and television industry. As such, MPAA places high priority on securing strong protection and enforcement disciplines in the intellectual property chapters of trade agreements,” the MPAA writes in its submission.

“Strong IPR protection and enforcement are critical trade priorities for the music industry. With IPR, we can create good jobs, make significant contributions to U.S. economic growth and security, invest in artists and their creativity, and drive technological innovation,” the RIAA notes.

While both groups have numerous demands, it’s clear that each seeks an environment where not only infringers can be held liable, but also Internet platforms and services.

For the RIAA, there is a big focus on the so-called ‘Value Gap’, a phenomenon found on user-uploaded content sites like YouTube that are able to offer infringing content while avoiding liability due to Section 512 of the DMCA.

“Today, user-uploaded content services, which have developed sophisticated on-demand music platforms, use this as a shield to avoid licensing music on fair terms like other digital services, claiming they are not legally responsible for the music they distribute on their site,” the RIAA writes.

“Services such as Apple Music, TIDAL, Amazon, and Spotify are forced to compete with services that claim they are not liable for the music they distribute.”

But if sites like YouTube are exercising their rights while acting legally under current US law, how can partners Canada and Mexico do any better? For the RIAA, that can be achieved by holding them to standards envisioned by the group when the DMCA was passed, not how things have panned out since.

Demanding that negotiators “protect the original intent” of safe harbor, the RIAA asks that a “high-level and high-standard service provider liability provision” is pursued. This, the music group says, should only be available to “passive intermediaries without requisite knowledge of the infringement on their platforms, and inapplicable to services actively engaged in communicating to the public.”

In other words, make sure that YouTube and similar sites won’t enjoy the same level of safe harbor protection as they do today.

The RIAA also requires any negotiated safe harbor provisions in NAFTA to be flexible in the event that the DMCA is tightened up in response to the ongoing safe harbor rules study.

In any event, NAFTA should not “support interpretations that no longer reflect today’s digital economy and threaten the future of legitimate and sustainable digital trade,” the RIAA states.

For the MPAA, Section 512 is also perceived as a problem. While noting that the original intent was to foster a system of shared responsibility between copyright owners and service providers, the MPAA says courts have subsequently let copyright holders down. Like the RIAA, the MPAA also suggests that Canada and Mexico can be held to higher standards.

“We recommend a new approach to this important trade policy provision by moving to high-level language that establishes intermediary liability and appropriate limitations on liability. This would be fully consistent with U.S. law and avoid the same misinterpretations by policymakers and courts overseas,” the MPAA writes.

“In so doing, a modernized NAFTA would be consistent with Trade Promotion Authority’s negotiating objective of ‘ensuring that standards of protection and enforcement keep pace with technological developments’.”

The MPAA also has some specific problems with Mexico, including unauthorized camcording. The Hollywood group says that 85 illicit audio and video recordings of films were linked to Mexican theaters in 2016. However, recording is not currently a criminal offense in Mexico.

Another issue for the MPAA is that criminal sanctions for commercial scale infringement are only available if the infringement is for profit.

“This has hampered enforcement against the above-discussed camcording problem but also against online infringement, such as peer-to-peer piracy, that may be on a scale that is immensely harmful to U.S. rightsholders but nonetheless occur without profit by the infringer,” the MPAA writes.

“The modernized NAFTA like other U.S. bilateral free trade agreements must provide for criminal sanctions against commercial scale infringements without proof of profit motive.”

Also of interest are the MPAA’s complaints against Mexico’s telecoms laws. Unlike in the US and many countries in Europe, Mexico’s ISPs are forbidden to hand out their customers’ personal details to rights holders looking to sue. This, the MPAA says, needs to change.

The submissions from the RIAA and MPAA can be found here and here (pdf)

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

The Dangers of Secret Law

2017-06-21 Bruce Schneier

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/06/the_dangers_of_.html

Last week, the Department of Justice released 18 new FISC opinions related to Section 702 as part of an EFF FOIA lawsuit. (Of course, they don’t mention EFF or the lawsuit. They make it sound as if it was their idea.)

There’s probably a lot in these opinions. In one Kafkaesque ruling, a defendant was denied access to the previous court rulings that were used by the court to decide against it:

…in 2014, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) rejected a service provider’s request to obtain other FISC opinions that government attorneys had cited and relied on in court filings seeking to compel the provider’s cooperation.

[…]

The provider’s request came up amid legal briefing by both it and the DOJ concerning its challenge to a 702 order. After the DOJ cited two earlier FISC opinions that were not public at the time — one from 2014 and another from 2008 — the provider asked the court for access to those rulings.

The provider argued that without being able to review the previous FISC rulings, it could not fully understand the court’s earlier decisions, much less effectively respond to DOJ’s argument. The provider also argued that because attorneys with Top Secret security clearances represented it, they could review the rulings without posing a risk to national security.

The court disagreed in several respects. It found that the court’s rules and Section 702 prohibited the documents release. It also rejected the provider’s claim that the Constitution’s Due Process Clause entitled it to the documents.

This kind of government secrecy is toxic to democracy. National security is important, but we will not survive if we become a country of secret court orders based on secret interpretations of secret law.

Sync vs. Backup vs. Storage

2017-06-20 Yev

Post Syndicated from Yev original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/sync-vs-backup-vs-storage/

Google Drive recently announced their new Backup and Sync feature for Google Drive, which allows users to select folders on their computer that they want to back up to their Google Drive account (note: these files count against your Google Drive storage limit). Whenever new backup services are announced, we get a lot of questions so I thought we should take a minute to review the differences in cloud based services.

What is the Cloud? Sync Vs Backup Vs Storage

There is still a lot of confusion in the space about what exactly the “cloud” is and how different services interact with it. When folks use a syncing and sharing service like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive or any of the others, they often assume those are acting as a cloud backup solution as well. Adding to the confusion, cloud storage services are often the backend for backup and sync services as well as standalone services. To help sort this out, we’ll define some of the terms below as they apply to a traditional computer set-up with a bunch of apps and data.

Cloud Sync (ex. Dropbox, iCloud Drive, OneDrive, Box, Google Drive) – these services sync folders on your computer to folders on other machines or to the cloud – allowing users to work from a folder or directory across devices. Typically these services have tiered pricing, meaning you pay for the amount of data you store with the service. If there is data loss, sometimes these services even have a rollback feature, of course only files that are in the synced folders are available to be recovered.

Cloud Backup (ex. Backblaze Cloud Backup, Mozy, Carbonite) – these services work in the background automatically. The user does not need to take any action like setting up specific folders. Backup services typically back up any new or changed data on your computer to another location. Before the cloud took off, that location was primarily a CD or an external hard drive – but as cloud storage became more readily available it became the most popular storage medium. Typically these services have fixed pricing, and if there is a system crash or data loss, all backed up data is available for restore. In addition, these services have rollback features in case there is data loss / accidental file deletion.

Cloud Storage (ex. Backblaze B2, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure) – these services are where many online backup and syncing and sharing services store data. Cloud storage providers typically serve as the endpoint for data storage. These services typically provide APIs, CLIs, and access points for individuals and developers to tie in their cloud storage offerings directly. These services are priced “per GB” meaning you pay for the amount of storage that you use. Since these services are designed for high-availability and durability, data can live solely on these services – though we still recommend having multiple copies of your data, just in case.

What Should You Use?

Backblaze strongly believes in a 3-2-1 Backup Strategy. A 3-2-1 strategy means having at least 3 total copies of your data, 2 of which are local but on different mediums (e.g. an external hard drive in addition to your computer’s local drive), and at least 1 copy offsite. The best setup is data on your computer, a copy on a hard drive that lives somewhere not inside your computer, and another copy with a cloud backup provider. Backblaze Cloud Backup is a great compliment to other services, like Time Machine, Dropbox, and even the free-tiers of cloud storage services.

What is The Difference Between Cloud Sync and Backup?

Let’s take a look at some sync setups that we see fairly frequently.

Example 1) Users have one folder on their computer that is designated for Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, or one of the other syncing/sharing services. Users save or place data into those directories when they want them to appear on other devices. Often these users are using the free-tier of those syncing and sharing services and only have a few GB of data uploaded in them.

Example 2) Users are paying for extended storage for Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc… and use those folders as the “Documents” folder – essentially working out of those directories. Files in that folder are available across devices, however, files outside of that folder (e.g. living on the computer’s desktop or anywhere else) are not synced or stored by the service.

What both examples are missing however is the backup of photos, movies, videos, and the rest of the data on their computer. That’s where cloud backup providers excel, by automatically backing up user data with little or no set-up, and no need for the dragging-and-dropping of files. Backblaze actually scans your hard drive to find all the data, regardless of where it might be hiding. The results are, all the user’s data is kept in the Backblaze cloud and the portion of the data that is synced is also kept in that provider’s cloud – giving the user another layer of redundancy. Best of all, Backblaze will actually back up your Dropbox, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, and OneDrive folders.

Data Recovery

The most important feature to think about is how easy it is to get your data back from all of these services. With sync and share services, retrieving a lot of data, especially if you are in a high-data tier, can be cumbersome and take awhile. Generally, the sync and share services only allow customers to download files over the Internet. If you are trying to download more than a couple gigabytes of data, the process can take time and can be fraught with errors.

With cloud storage services, you can usually only retrieve data over the Internet as well, and you pay for both the storage and the egress of the data, so retrieving a large amount of data can be both expensive and time consuming.

Cloud backup services will enable you to download files over the internet too and can also suffer from long download times. At Backblaze we never want our customers to feel like we’re holding their data hostage, which is why we have a lot of restore options, including our Restore Return Refund policy, which allows people to restore their data via a USB Hard Drive, and then return that drive to us for a refund. Cloud sync providers do not provide this capability.

One popular data recovery use case we’ve seen when a person has a lot of data to restore is to download just the files that are needed immediately, and then order a USB Hard Drive restore for the remaining files that are not as time sensitive. The user gets all their files back in a few days, and their network is spared the download charges.

The bottom line is that all of these services have merit for different use-cases. Have questions about which is best for you? Sound off in the comments below!

The post Sync vs. Backup vs. Storage appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

The Android Things Candy Dispenser

2017-06-19 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/android-things-candy-dispenser/

Alvaro Viebrantz‘s Android Things Candy Dispenser combines image recognition and sugar highs in one delicious Raspberry Pi project.

Android Things A.I. Candy Dispenser

A Candy Dispenser running Android Things, that exchange photos for candies. It uses computer vision to classify the image. https://github.com/alvarowolfx/ai-candy-dispenser https://www.hackster.io/alvarowolfx/android-things-a-i-candy-dispenser-a47e74

Android Things

Released late last year, Android Things is Google’s Android-based operating system for low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as the Raspberry Pi.

Candy

Invented in ancient India, candy is a scrumptious treat often made of sugar and/or chocolate.

The Android Things Candy Dispenser

Via its 20×4 display, Alvaro’s candy dispenser asks for an image, for example of a cat or a dog. Produce the requested image in front of the onboard Camera Module and the dispenser releases a delicious reward for you.

Inside the dispenser

Android Things Candy Dispenser Raspberry Pi

Alvaro’s schematic provides all the information you need to build your own Android Things candy dispenser (click for a larger version)

The dispenser uses a Raspberry Pi to control both the image detection and the candy release. Press the button, and the Raspberry Pi displays one of several image subjects on the screen. Via the camera, the Pi records the image you present and sends for processing via Google’s Cloud Vision API. Cloud Vision supplies image annotations and metadata, and if these match the image request, boom, free candy!

To discover more about Google Cloud Vision, check out this video from the Cloud Vision team.

Alvaro provides full instructions for the build, including all necessary code and peripherals, on both Instructables and GitHub.

Building with Android Things

Given that Android Things has not been available for very long, we have yet to see many complete builds using it with the Raspberry Pi. If you’d like to try out this OS, Alvaro’s project is a great entry point. You should also check out the Pimoroni Rainbow HAT Android Things Starter Kit that provides everything you need to begin making. And if you have a Pi and are raring to go, follow the official ‘Android Things on Raspberry Pi’ setup guide here.

If you’ve already built a project using the Android Things platform, we’d love to see it! Make sure to share your project link in the comments below.

The post The Android Things Candy Dispenser appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

The Pirate Bay Isn’t Affected By Adverse Court Rulings – Everyone Else Is

2017-06-18 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-isnt-affected-by-adverse-court-rulings-everyone-else-is-170618/

For more than a decade The Pirate Bay has been the world’s most controversial site. Delivering huge quantities of copyrighted content to the masses, the platform is revered and reviled across the copyright spectrum.

Its reputation is one of a defiant Internet swashbuckler, but due to changes in how the site has been run in more recent times, its current philosophy is more difficult to gauge. What has never been in doubt, however, is the site’s original intent to be as provocative as possible.

Through endless publicity stunts, some real, some just for the ‘lulz’, The Pirate Bay managed to attract a massive audience, all while incurring the wrath of every major copyright holder in the world.

Make no mistake, they all queued up to strike back, but every subsequent rightsholder action was met by a Pirate Bay middle finger, two fingers, or chin flick, depending on the mood of the day. This only served to further delight the masses, who happily spread the word while keeping their torrents flowing.

This vicious circle of being targeted by the entertainment industries, mocking them, and then reaping the traffic benefits, developed into the cheapest long-term marketing campaign the Internet had ever seen. But nothing is ever truly for free and there have been consequences.

After taunting Hollywood and the music industry with its refusals to capitulate, endless legal action that the site would have ordinarily been forced to participate in largely took place without The Pirate Bay being present. It doesn’t take a law degree to work out what happened in each and every one of those cases, whatever complex route they took through the legal system. No defense, no win.

For example, the web-blocking phenomenon across the UK, Europe, Asia and Australia was driven by the site’s absolute resilience and although there would clearly have been other scapegoats had The Pirate Bay disappeared, the site was the ideal bogeyman the copyright lobby required to move forward.

Filing blocking lawsuits while bringing hosts, advertisers, and ISPs on board for anti-piracy initiatives were also made easier with the ‘evil’ Pirate Bay still online. Immune from every anti-piracy technique under the sun, the existence of the platform in the face of all onslaughts only strengthened the cases of those arguing for even more drastic measures.

Over a decade, this has meant a significant tightening of the sharing and streaming climate. Without any big legislative changes but plenty of case law against The Pirate Bay, web-blocking is now a walk in the park, ad hoc domain seizures are a fairly regular occurrence, and few companies want to host sharing sites. Advertisers and brands are also hesitant over where they place their ads. It’s a very different world to the one of 10 years ago.

While it would be wrong to attribute every tightening of the noose to the actions of The Pirate Bay, there’s little doubt that the site and its chaotic image played a huge role in where copyright enforcement is today. The platform set out to provoke and succeeded in every way possible, gaining supporters in their millions. It could also be argued it kicked a hole in a hornets’ nest, releasing the hell inside.

But perhaps the site’s most amazing achievement is the way it has managed to stay online, despite all the turmoil.

This week yet another ruling, this time from the powerful European Court of Justice, found that by offering links in the manner it does, The Pirate Bay and other sites are liable for communicating copyright works to the public. Of course, this prompted the usual swathe of articles claiming that this could be the final nail in the site’s coffin.

Wrong.

In common with every ruling, legal defeat, and legislative restriction put in place due to the site’s activities, this week’s decision from the ECJ will have zero effect on the Pirate Bay’s availability. For right or wrong, the site was breaking the law long before this ruling and will continue to do so until it decides otherwise.

What we have instead is a further tightened legal landscape that will have a lasting effect on everything BUT the site, including weaker torrent sites, Internet users, and user-uploaded content sites such as YouTube.

With The Pirate Bay carrying on regardless, that is nothing short of remarkable.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Alleged KickassTorrents Owner Considers ‘Voluntary Surrender’ to the US

2017-06-16 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/alleged-kickasstorrents-owner-considers-voluntary-surrender-to-the-us-170616/

Earlier this year a Polish court ruled that Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of the defunct torrent site KickassTorrents, can be extradited to the United States.

The decision came as a disappointment to the defense team, which quickly announced an appeal.

Vaulin has since been released on bail and currently resides in a Warsaw apartment. His release has made it easier to communicate with his attorneys in the United States, who have started negotiations with the US Government.

While the extradition appeal is still ongoing, it now appears that under the right conditions Vaulin might consider traveling to the United States voluntarily, so he can “resolve” the pending charges.

This is what the defense team states in a motion for a status conference (pdf), which was submitted earlier this week.

“Mr. Vaulin and his counsel in the United States recently have engaged in discussions with the government to determine if the parties can resolve this matter, or at least certain significant issues,” Vaulin’s legal team writes.

This includes “…issues relating to the proper calculation of the sentencing guidelines and/or the possibility of an agreement for bond should Mr. Vaulin decide to voluntarily surrender to the United States authorities and appear before this Court to resolve the pending charges.”

While the alleged KickassTorrents operator would be open to a voluntary “surrender,” he probably wants several guarantees before that happens. TorrentFreak reached out to the defense team for more information, but they preferred not to comment on ongoing negotiations.

Previously, Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom made a similar offer in his criminal case, requesting living expenses and a fair trial. The US Government never took him up on this offer, it appears, as Dotcom still resides in New Zealand.

In Vaulin’s case, the defense previously submitted a motion to dismiss some or all of the charges in the indictment, and they hope a ruling on this will bring more clarity soon. With the requested status conference, both parties will at least be able to update the court on various procedural issues

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Mira, tiny robot of joyful delight

2017-06-16 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/mira-robot-alonso-martinez/

The staff of Pi Towers are currently melting into puddles while making ‘Aaaawwwwwww’ noises as Mira, the adorable little Pi-controlled robot made by Pixar 3D artist Alonso Martinez, steals their hearts.

Mira the robot playing peek-a-boo

If you want to get updates on Mira’s progress, sign up for the mailing list! http://eepurl.com/bteigD Mira is a desk companion that makes your life better one smile at a time. This project explores human robot interactivity and emotional intelligence. Currently Mira uses face tracking to interact with the users and loves playing the game “peek-a-boo”.

Introducing Mira

Honestly, I can’t type words – I am but a puddle! If I could type at all, I would only produce a stream of affectionate fragments. Imagine walking into a room full of kittens. What you would sound like is what I’d type.

No! I can do this. I’m a professional. I write for a living! I can…

SHE BLINKS OHMYAAAARGH!!!

Weebl & Bob meets South Park’s Ike Broflovski in an adorable 3D-printed bundle of ‘Aaawwwww’

Introducing Mira (I promise I can do this)

Right. I’ve had a nap and a drink. I’ve composed myself. I am up for this challenge. As long as I don’t look directly at her, I’ll be fine!

Here I go.

As one of the many über-talented 3D artists at Pixar, Alonso Martinez knows a thing or two about bringing adorable-looking characters to life on screen. However, his work left him wondering:

In movies you see really amazing things happening but you actually can’t interact with them – what would it be like if you could interact with characters?

So with the help of his friends Aaron Nathan and Vijay Sundaram, Alonso set out to bring the concept of animation to the physical world by building a “character” that reacts to her environment. His experiments with robotics started with Gertie, a ball-like robot reminiscent of his time spent animating bouncing balls when he was learning his trade. From there, he moved on to Mira.

Many, many of the views of this Tested YouTube video have come from me. So many.

Mira swivels to follow a person’s face, plays games such as peekaboo, shows surprise when you finger-shoot her, and giggles when you give her a kiss.

Mira’s inner workings

To get Mira to turn her head in three dimensions, Alonso took inspiration from the Microsoft Sidewinder Pro joystick he had as a kid. He purchased one on eBay, took it apart to understand how it works, and replicated its mechanism for Mira’s Raspberry Pi-powered innards.

Alonso used the smallest components he could find so that they would fit inside Mira’s tiny body.

Mira’s axis of 3D-printed parts moves via tiny Power HD DSM44 servos, while a camera and OpenCV handle face-tracking, and a single NeoPixel provides a range of colours to indicate her emotions. As for the blinking eyes? Two OLED screens boasting acrylic domes fit within the few millimeters between all the other moving parts.

More on Mira, including her history and how she works, can be found in this wonderful video released by Tested this week.

Pixar Artist’s 3D-Printed Animated Robots!

We’re gushing with grins and delight at the sight of these adorable animated robots created by artist Alonso Martinez. Sean chats with Alonso to learn how he designed and engineered his family of robots, using processes like 3D printing, mold-making, and silicone casting. They’re amazing!

You can also sign up for Alonso’s newsletter here to stay up-to-date about this little robot. Hopefully one of these newsletters will explain how to buy or build your own Mira, as I for one am desperate to see her adorable little face on my desk every day for the rest of my life.

The post Mira, tiny robot of joyful delight appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Box Platform on AWS Marketplace – Lambda Blueprints & Sample Code

2017-06-15 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/box-platform-on-aws-marketplace-lambda-blueprints-sample-code/

Box is a cloud-based file sharing and content management system, with an API that recently became available in AWS Marketplace (Box Platform – Cloud Content Management APIs). With an array of features for collaboration and an emphasis on security, Box has found a home in many enterprises (see their success stories page for a list).

The Box API allows developers to build content experiences into web and mobile apps. Today I would like to tell you about some AWS Lambda blueprints and templates that will help you to build AWS applications that use this API to simplify user authentication and to add metadata to newly uploaded content. The templates are based on the Box Node Lambda Sample and should be a robust starting point for your own development.

Let’s take a look at the blueprints and then review some handy blog posts written by our friends at Box.

Box Blueprints for Lambda
The blueprints show you how to call the Box APIS and to connect a Box webhook to a Lambda function via Amazon API Gateway. To find them, simply open up the Lambda Console and search for box:

The first blueprint uses security credentials stored in the BOX_CONFIG environment variable. You can set the variable from within the Lambda Console:

The code in this blueprint retrieves and logs the Box User object for the user identified by the credentials.

The second blueprint implements a Box webhook that sits behind an API Gateway endpoint. It accepts requests, validates them, and logs them to Amazon CloudWatch:

Handy Blog Posts
The developer relations team at Box has written some blog posts that show you how to use Box in conjunction with several AWS services:

Manage User Authentication with Box Platform using Amazon Cognito – This post shows you how to use Amazon Cognito to power a login page for your app users. Cognito will handle authentication and user pool management and the code outlined in the blog post will create an App User in Box the first time the user logs in. The code is available as box-node-cognito-lambdas-sample on GitHub.

Add Deep Learning-based Image Recognition to your Box App with Amazon Rekognition – This post shows you how to build an image tagging application that is powered by Amazon Rekognition. Users take and upload photos, which are automatically labeled with metadata that that is stored in Amazon DynamoDB. The code is activated by a webhook when a file is uploaded. You can find the code in the box-node-rekognition-webhook on GitHub.

Thanks to our friends at Box for taking the time to create these helpful developer resources!

— Jeff;

New – Auto Scaling for Amazon DynamoDB

2017-06-15 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-auto-scaling-for-amazon-dynamodb/

Amazon DynamoDB has more than one hundred thousand customers, spanning a wide range of industries and use cases. These customers depend on DynamoDB’s consistent performance at any scale and presence in 16 geographic regions around the world. A recent trend we’ve been observing is customers using DynamoDB to power their serverless applications. This is a good match: with DynamoDB, you don’t have to think about things like provisioning servers, performing OS and database software patching, or configuring replication across availability zones to ensure high availability – you can simply create tables and start adding data, and let DynamoDB handle the rest.

DynamoDB provides a provisioned capacity model that lets you set the amount of read and write capacity required by your applications. While this frees you from thinking about servers and enables you to change provisioning for your table with a simple API call or button click in the AWS Management Console, customers have asked us how we can make managing capacity for DynamoDB even easier.

Today we are introducing Auto Scaling for DynamoDB to help automate capacity management for your tables and global secondary indexes. You simply specify the desired target utilization and provide upper and lower bounds for read and write capacity. DynamoDB will then monitor throughput consumption using Amazon CloudWatch alarms and then will adjust provisioned capacity up or down as needed. Auto Scaling will be on by default for all new tables and indexes, and you can also configure it for existing ones.

Even if you’re not around, DynamoDB Auto Scaling will be monitoring your tables and indexes to automatically adjust throughput in response to changes in application traffic. This can make it easier to administer your DynamoDB data, help you maximize availability for your applications, and help you reduce your DynamoDB costs.

Let’s see how it works…

Using Auto Scaling
The DynamoDB Console now proposes a comfortable set of default parameters when you create a new table. You can accept them as-is or you can uncheck Use default settings and enter your own parameters:

Here’s how you enter your own parameters:

Target utilization is expressed in terms of the ratio of consumed capacity to provisioned capacity. The parameters above would allow for sufficient headroom to allow consumed capacity to double due to a burst in read or write requests (read Capacity Unit Calculations to learn more about the relationship between DynamoDB read and write operations and provisioned capacity). Changes in provisioned capacity take place in the background.

Auto Scaling in Action
In order to see this important new feature in action, I followed the directions in the Getting Started Guide. I launched a fresh EC2 instance, installed (sudo pip install boto3) and configured (aws configure) the AWS SDK for Python. Then I used the code in the Python and DynamoDB section to create and populate a table with some data, and manually configured the table for 5 units each of read and write capacity.

I took a quick break in order to have clean, straight lines for the CloudWatch metrics so that I could show the effect of Auto Scaling. Here’s what the metrics look like before I started to apply a load:

I modified the code in Step 3 to continually issue queries for random years in the range of 1920 to 2007, ran a single copy of the code, and checked the read metrics a minute or two later:

The consumed capacity is higher than the provisioned capacity, resulting in a large number of throttled reads. Time for Auto Scaling!

I returned to the console and clicked on the Capacity tab for my table. Then I clicked on Read capacity, accepted the default values, and clicked on Save:

DynamoDB created a new IAM role (DynamoDBAutoscaleRole) and a pair of CloudWatch alarms to manage the Auto Scaling of read capacity:

DynamoDB Auto Scaling will manage the thresholds for the alarms, moving them up and down as part of the scaling process. The first alarm was triggered and the table state changed to Updating while additional read capacity was provisioned:

The change was visible in the read metrics within minutes:

I started a couple of additional copies of my modified query script and watched as additional capacity was provisioned, as indicated by the red line:

I killed all of the scripts and turned my attention to other things while waiting for the scale-down alarm to trigger. Here’s what I saw when I came back:

The next morning I checked my Scaling activities and saw that the alarm had triggered several more times overnight:

This was also visible in the metrics:

Until now, you would prepare for this situation by setting your read capacity well about your expected usage, and pay for the excess capacity (the space between the blue line and the red line). Or, you might set it too low, forget to monitor it, and run out of capacity when traffic picked up. With Auto Scaling you can get the best of both worlds: an automatic response when an increase in demand suggests that more capacity is needed, and another automated response when the capacity is no longer needed.

Things to Know
DynamoDB Auto Scaling is designed to accommodate request rates that vary in a somewhat predictable, generally periodic fashion. If you need to accommodate unpredictable bursts of read activity, you should use Auto Scaling in combination with DAX (read Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) – In-Memory Caching for Read-Intensive Workloads to learn more). Also, the AWS SDKs will detect throttled read and write requests and retry them after a suitable delay.

I mentioned the DynamoDBAutoscaleRole earlier. This role provides Auto Scaling with the privileges that it needs to have in order for it to be able to scale your tables and indexes up and down. To learn more about this role and the permissions that it uses, read Grant User Permissions for DynamoDB Auto Scaling.

Auto Scaling has complete CLI and API support, including the ability to enable and disable the Auto Scaling policies. If you have some predictable, time-bound spikes in traffic, you can programmatically disable an Auto Scaling policy, provision higher throughput for a set period of time, and then enable Auto Scaling again later.

As noted on the Limits in DynamoDB page, you can increase provisioned capacity as often as you would like and as high as you need (subject to per-account limits that we can increase on request). You can decrease capacity up to nine times per day for each table or global secondary index.

You pay for the capacity that you provision, at the regular DynamoDB prices. You can also purchase DynamoDB Reserved Capacity to further savings.

Available Now
This feature is available now in all regions and you can start using it today!

— Jeff;

Making Waves: print out sound waves with the Raspberry Pi

2017-06-14 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/printed-sound-wave/

For fun, Eunice Lee, Matthew Zhang, and Bomani McClendon have worked together to create Waves, an audiovisual project that records people’s spoken responses to personal questions and prints them in the form of a sound wave as a gift for being truthful.

Waves

Waves is a Raspberry Pi project centered around transforming the transience of the spoken word into something concrete and physical. In our setup, a user presses a button corresponding to an intimate question (ex: what’s your motto?) and answers it into a microphone while pressing down on the button.

What are you grateful for?

“I’m grateful for finishing this project,” admits maker Eunice Lee as she presses a button and speaks into the microphone that is part of the Waves project build. After a brief moment, her confession appears on receipt paper as a waveform, and she grins toward the camera, happy with the final piece.

Eunice testing Waves

Waves is a Raspberry Pi project centered around transforming the transience of the spoken word into something concrete and physical. In our setup, a user presses a button corresponding to an intimate question (ex: what’s your motto?) and answers it into a microphone while pressing down on the button.

Sound wave machine

Alongside a Raspberry Pi 3, the Waves device is comprised of four tactile buttons, a standard USB microphone, and a thermal receipt printer. This type of printer has become easily available for the maker movement from suppliers such as Adafruit and Pimoroni.

Eunice Lee, Matthew Zhang, Bomani McClendon - Sound Wave Raspberry Pi

Definitely more fun than a polygraph test

The trio designed four colour-coded cards that represent four questions, each of which has a matching button on the breadboard. Press the button that belongs to the question to be answered, and Python code directs the Pi to record audio via the microphone. Releasing the button stops the audio recording. “Once the recording has been saved, the script viz.py is launched,” explains Lee. “This script takes the audio file and, using Python matplotlib magic, turns it into a nice little waveform image.”

From there, the Raspberry Pi instructs the thermal printer to produce a printout of the sound wave image along with the question.

Making for fun

Eunice, Bomani, and Matt, students of design and computer science at Northwestern University in Illinois, built Waves as a side project. They wanted to make something at the intersection of art and technology and were motivated by the pure joy of creating.

Making makes people happy

They have noted improvements that can be made to increase the scope of their sound wave project. We hope to see many more interesting builds from these three, and in the meantime we invite you all to look up their code on Eunice’s GitHub to create your own Waves at home.

The post Making Waves: print out sound waves with the Raspberry Pi appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

UK Police Claim Success in Keeping Gambling Ads off Pirate Sites

2017-06-14 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/uk-police-claim-success-in-keeping-gambling-ads-off-pirate-sites-170614/

Over the past several years, there has been a major effort by entertainment industry groups to cut off revenue streams to ‘pirate’ sites. The theory is that if sites cannot generate funds, their operators will eventually lose interest.

Since advertising is a key money earner for any website, significant resources have been expended trying to keep ads off sites that directly or indirectly profit from infringement. It’s been a multi-pronged affair, with agencies being encouraged to do the right thing and brands warned that their ads appearing on pirate sites does nothing for their image.

One sector that has trailed behind most is the gambling industry. Up until fairly recently, ads for some of the UK’s largest bookmakers have been a regular feature on many large pirate sites, either embedded in pages or more often than not, appearing via popup or pop-under spreads. Now, however, a significant change is being reported.

According to the City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), over the past 12 months there has been an 87% drop in adverts for licensed gambling operators being displayed on infringing websites.

The research was carried out by whiteBULLET, a brand safety and advertising solutions company which helps advertisers to assess whether placing an advert on a particular URL will cause it to appear on a pirate site.

PIPCU says that licensed gambling operators have an obligation to “keep crime out of gambling” due to their commitments under the Gambling Act 2005. However, the Gambling Commission, the UK’s gambling regulatory body, has recently been taking additional steps to tackle the problem.

In September 2015, the Commission consulted on amendments (pdf) to licensing conditions that would compel licensees to ensure that advertisements “placed by themselves and others” do not appear on websites providing unauthorized access to copyrighted content.

After the consultation was published in May 2016 (pdf), all respondents agreed in principle that gambling operators should not advertise on pirate sites. A month later, the Commission said it would ban the placement of gambling ads on such platforms.

When the new rules came into play last October, 40 gambling companies (including Bet365, Coral and Sky Bet, who had previously been called out for displaying ads on pirate sites) were making use of PIPCU’s ‘Infringing Website List‘, a database of sites that police claim are actively involved in piracy.

Speaking yesterday, acting Detective Superintendent Peter Ratcliffe, Head of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), welcomed the ensuing reduction in ad placement on ‘pirate’ domains.

“The success of a strong relationship built between PIPCU and The Gambling Commission can be seen by these figures. This is a fantastic example of a joint working initiative between police and an industry regulator,” Ratcliffe said.

“We commend the 40 gambling companies who are already using the Infringing Website List and encourage others to sign up. We will continue to encourage all UK advertisers to become a member of the Infringing Website List to ensure they’re not inadvertently funding criminal websites.”

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Kodi Turmoil Continues as TVAddons Mysteriously Disappears

2017-06-13 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/kodi-turmoil-continues-as-tvaddons-mysteriously-disappears-170613/

Last week we broke the news that third-party Kodi add-on ZemTV and the TVAddons library were being sued in a federal court in Texas.

Since then, the ‘pirate’ Kodi community has been in turmoil. Several popular Kodi addons decided to shut down, and now TVAddons itself appears to be in trouble as well.

TVAddons is pne of the largest repositories of Kodi add-ons, many of which allow users to watch pirated content. The site has grown massively in recent years and reported that nearly 40 million unique users connected to the site’s servers in March.

Since yesterday, however, these millions of users can no longer access the site. Without prior warning or a public explanation, TVAddons’ domain name stopped responding. The domain’s DNS entries have been removed which means that it’s no longer accessible to the public.

Those who try to access the site either get a browser error message, or are redirected to a page of TVAddons’ domain name registrar Uniregistry.com (in some cases people may still see the site, if the DNS entries are cached).

TVAddons.ag can’t be reached

For now, it’s unclear who removed the DNS entries and why. The registrar could have taken this action, but TVAddons may have done it themselves too.

TorrentFreak reached out to TVAddons a few times over the past several days but without response. The site’s spokesperson was previously quick to reply, but after the Dish lawsuit became public this changed.

In response to our latest email inquiry, we received an error message, suggesting that the site’s official email addresses are no longer functioning due to the domain troubles.

TVAddons has also gone quiet on social media, where TVAddons has been very active in the past. However, the last updates on Twitter and Facebook date back more than a week ago. In fact, a few hours ago TVAddons’ Facebook page disappeared completely.

Facebook page unavailable

Based on the current downtime issues, it’s no surprise that people are getting worried. If TVAddons doesn’t return, the Kodi-addon community has lost what’s arguably its biggest player.

The site’s extensive library listed 1,500 different add-ons, of which the community-maintained Exodus addon was one of the most popular. Now that the site is no longer available, people may run into issues while updating these.

That said, it’s best not to jump to conclusions without an official explanation from the team. If we find out more, this article will be updated accordingly.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

A rather dandy Pi-assisted Draisine

2017-06-12 Alex Bate

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/dandy-draisine/

It’s time to swap pedal power for relaxed strides with the Raspberry Pi-assisted Draisine from bicyle-modding pro Prof. Holger Hermanns.

Raspberry PI-powered Dandy Horse Draisine

So dandy…

A Draisine…

If you have children yourself or have seen them in the wild on occasion, you may be aware of how much they like balance bikes – bicycle frames without pedals, propelled by striding while sitting on the seat. It’s a nice way for children to take the first steps (bah-dum tss) towards learning to ride a bicycle. However, between 1817, when the balance bike (also known as a draisine or Dandy Horse) was invented by Karl von Drais, and the introduction of the pedal bike around 1860, this vehicle was the new, fun, and exciting way to travel for everyone.

We can’t wait for the inevitable IKEA flatpack release

Having previously worked on wireless braking systems for bicycles, Prof. Hermanns is experienced in adding tech to two wheels. Now, he and his team of computer scientists at Germany’s Saarland University have updated the balance bike for the 21st century: they built the Draisine 200.0 to explore pedal-free, power-assisted movement as part of the European Research Council-funded POWVER project.

With this draisine, his team have created a beautiful, fully functional final build that would look rather fetching here on the bicycle-flooded streets of Cambridge.

The frame of the bike, except for the wheel bearings and the various screws, is made of Okoumé wood, which looks somewhat rose, has fine nerves (which means that it is easy to mill) and seems to have excellent weather resistance.

Draisine 200.0

Uploaded by ecomento.tv on 2017-06-08.

…with added Pi!

Within the wooden body of the draisine lies a array of electrical components, including a 200-watt rear hub motor, a battery, an accelerometer, a magnetic sensor, and a Raspberry Pi. Checking the accelerometer and reading wheel-embedded sensors 150 times per second (wow!), the Pi activates the hub motor to assist the draisine, which allows it to reach speeds of up to 16mph (25km/h – wow again!).

The inner workings of the Draisine 200.0

More detailed information on the Draisine 200.0 build can be found here. Hermanns’s team also plan to release the code for the project once confirmation of no licence infringement has been given.

Take to the road

We’ve seen a variety of bicycle-oriented Pi builds that improve safety and help with navigation. But as for electricity-assisted Pi bikes, this one may be the first, and it’s such a snazzy one at that!

If you’d like to see more cycle-based projects using the Raspberry Pi, check out Matt’s Smart Bike Light, David’s bike computer, and, for the fun of it, the Pi-powered bicycle beer dispenser we covered last month.

The Pi Towers hive mind is constantly discussing fun new ways for its active cycling community to use the Raspberry Pi, and we’d love to hear your ideas as well! So please do share them in the comments below.

The post A rather dandy Pi-assisted Draisine appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Popular Release Group ShAaNiG Permanently Shuts Down

2017-06-12 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/popular-release-group-shaanig-permanently-shuts-down-170612/

While there are dozens of torrent release groups in operation today, some providing extremely high quality work, every few years a notable ‘brand’ group appears.

Two of the most famous from recent memory were aXXo and YIFY. Neither were known for historic individual releases or world-beating quality, but both were particularly consistent. An aXXo or YIFY label on an official torrent assured the potential downloader they would be getting a ‘McDonalds-quality’ product; never haute cuisine but just enough taste and in enough volume to fill people up.

As a result, these groups gained millions of followers, something that put anti-piracy targets on their backs. No surprise then that neither are around today, with YIFY subjected to legal action in New Zealand and aXXo….well, no one seems to know.

With those groups gone, there was a gap in the market for a similar product. Popular releases delivered to the masses in small file sizes is clearly a recipe for success and an existing group called ShAaNiG decided to step in to take up some of the slack.

What followed was thousands of ShAaNiG movie and TV show releases, which were uploaded to The Pirate Bay and direct download sites. They also took pride of place on the group’s forum at Shaanig.org, where they were neatly organized into relevant categories.

ShAaNiG’s release forum

But like aXXO and YIFY before it, something went wrong at ShAaNiG. After publishing a couple of releases on Saturday, including a Blu-ray rip of the movie Jawbone and an episode of TV show Outcast, ShAaNiG unexpectedly threw in the towel. A notice on the group’s homepage gives no reason for the sudden shutdown but makes it clear that ShAaNiG won’t be coming back.

“ShAaNiG has shut down permanently,” it reads. “Every journey must come to an end, This is the end of our journey. Thank you for all your support.”

While there are only so many ways to say that a site has been shut down for good, the first sentence is identical to the one used by ExtraTorrent when it closed down last month.

Another potentially interesting similarity is that both ExtraTorrent and ShAaNiG had huge followings in India, with both sites indexing a lot of local content, especially movies.

More than 30% of ShAaNiG’s traffic came from India, with much of it driven from The Pirate Bay where more than a thousand releases live on today. When ExtraTorrent shut down, around 40% of the new traffic arriving at another popular platform came from India.

Whether the Indian connection is pure coincidence remains to be seen, but it seems possible if not likely that some kind of legal pressure played a part in the demise of both. However, if the situation plays out in the same manner, we’ll hear no more and like ExtraTorrent, ShAaNiG will simply fade away.

While that will come as a huge disappointment to ShAaNiG fans, other file-sharers are likely to have less sympathy. Like aXXo and YIFY before it, ShAaNiG was rarely (if ever) the source of the material it released, instead preferring to re-encode existing releases. For some pirates, that’s a red line that should never be crossed.

Whether a new group will rise phoenix-like from the ashes will remain to be seen but as these ‘brand’ groups have established time and again, there’s always a market for passable quality movie releases, if they come in a compact file-size.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 06/12/17

2017-06-12 Ernesto

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-pirated-movies-week-bittorrent-061217/

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

The Fate of the Furious, which came out as Web-DL this week, is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(5)	The Fate of the Furious	6.7 / trailer
2	(…)	Wonder Woman (TC)	8.2 / trailer
3	(7)	Life	6.8 / trailer
4	(1)	John Wick: Chapter 2	8.0 / trailer
5	(2)	The Boss Baby	6.5 / trailer
6	(3)	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (TS)	7.1 / trailer
7	(4)	Logan	8.6 / trailer
8	(…)	The Belko Experiment	6.2 / trailer
9	(8)	Ghost in The Shell (Subbed HDRip)	6.9 / trailer
10	(9)	Kong: Skull Island (Subbed HDRip)	7.0 / trailer

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Nintendo & BREIN Target Seller of ‘Pirate’ Retro Gaming System

2017-06-10 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/nintendo-brein-target-seller-of-pirate-retro-gaming-system-170610/

As millions of often younger gamers immerse themselves in the latest 3D romp-fests from the world’s leading games developers, huge numbers of people are reliving their youth through the wonders of emulation.

The majority of old gaming systems can be emulated on a decent PC these days, opening up the possibility of reanimating thousands of the greatest games to ever grace the planet. While that’s a great prospect, the good news doesn’t stop there. The games are all free – if you don’t mind pirating them.

While many people go the do-it-yourself route by downloading emulators and ROMs (the games) from the Internet, increasingly people are saving time by buying systems ready-made online. Some of these are hugely impressive, housed in full-size arcade machine cabinets and packing many thousands of games. They also have sizeable price tags to match, running in some cases to thousands of dollars. But there are other options.

The rise of affordable compact computers has opened up emulation and retro gaming to a whole new audience and inevitable some people have taken to selling these devices online with the games pre-bundled on SD cards. These systems can be obtained relatively cheaply but despite the games being old, companies like Nintendo still take a dim view of their sale.

That’s also the case in the Netherlands, where Nintendo and other companies are taking action against people involved in the sale of what are effectively pirate gaming systems. In a recent case, Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN took action against the operator of the Retrospeler (Retro Player) site, an outlet selling a ready-made retro gaming system.

Retro Player site (translated from Dutch)

As seen from the image above, for a little under 110 euros the player can buy a games machine with classics like Super Mario, Street Fighter, and Final Fantasy pre-installed. Add a TV via an HDMI lead and a joypad or two, and yesteryear gaming becomes reality today. Unfortunately, the fun didn’t last long and it was soon “Game Over” for Retro Player.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, BREIN chief Tim Kuik says that the system sold by Retro Player was based on the popular Raspberry Pi single-board computer. Although small and relatively cheap, the Pi is easily capable of running retro games via software such as RetroPie, but it’s unclear which product was installed on the version sold by Retro Player.

What is clear is that the device came pre-installed with a lot of games. The now-defunct Retro Player site listed 6,500 titles for a wide range of classic gaming systems, including Gameboy, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Megadrive and Playstation. Kuik didn’t provide precise numbers but said that the machine came packaged with “a couple of thousand” titles.

BREIN says in this particular case it was acting on behalf of Nintendo, among others. However, it doesn’t appear that the case will be going to court. Like many other cases handled by the anti-piracy group, BREIN says it has reached a settlement with the operator of the Retro Player site for an unspecified amount.

The debate and controversy surrounding retro gaming and emulation is one that has been running for years. The thriving community sees little wrong with reanimating games for long-dead systems and giving them new life among a new audience. On the other hand, copyright holders such as Nintendo view their titles as their property, to be exploited in a time, place and manner of their choosing.

While that friction will continue for a long time to come, there will be few if any legal problems for those choosing to pursue their emulation fantasies in the privacy of their own home. Retro gaming is here to stay and as long as computing power continues to increase, the experience is only likely to improve.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Noise

Tag Archives: cam

CoderDojo Coolest Projects 2017

This year’s coolest projects!

Coolest robots

Raspberry Pi Lawnmower

Philip Colligan on Twitter

Games, toys, activities

Creativity and ingenuity

Philip Colligan on Twitter

The wow factor

Join this awesome community!

NSA Insider Security Post-Snowden

Opus 1.2 released

The Dangers of Secret Law

Mira, tiny robot of joyful delight

Mira the robot playing peek-a-boo

Introducing Mira

Introducing Mira (I promise I can do this)

Mira’s inner workings

Pixar Artist’s 3D-Printed Animated Robots!

Making Waves: print out sound waves with the Raspberry Pi

Waves

What are you grateful for?

Eunice testing Waves

Sound wave machine

Making for fun

A rather dandy Pi-assisted Draisine

A Draisine…

Draisine 200.0

…with added Pi!

Take to the road

The collective thoughts of the interwebz