Tag Archives: creative

Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit Secures Funding Until 2019

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/police-intellectual-property-crime-unit-secures-funding-until-2019-170823/

When compared to the wide range of offenses usually handled by the police, copyright infringement is a relatively rare offense.

Historically most connected to physical counterfeiting, in recent years infringement has regularly featured a significant online component.

Formed four years ago and run by the City of London Police, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has a mission to tackle IP crime wherever it may take place but with a special online focus. It is tightly linked to the music, movie, and publishing industries so can most often be viewed protecting their products from infringement.

PIPCU announced its arrival in the summer of 2013 and officially launched a few months later in December 2013, complete with £2.56million in funding from the UK government’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO). However, the unit had been already in operation for some time, writing warning letters to torrent and streaming site advising them to shut down – or else.

PIPCU’s initial funding secured the future of the unit until June 2015 but in October 2014, well in advance of that deadline, PIPCU secured another £3m from the IPO to fund the unit to September 2017.

Having received £5.56 million in public funds over three years, PIPCU needed to show some bang for its buck. As a result, the unit publicised numerous actions including streaming arrests, attempted domain seizures, torrent site closures and advertising disruptions. PIPCU also shut down several sports streaming and ebook sites plus a large number of proxies

With August 2017 already upon us, PIPCU should be officially out of funds in a month’s time but according to the Law Gazette, the unit is going nowhere.

An Intellectual Property Office (IPO) spokesperson told the publication that PIPCU has received £3.32m in additional funding from the government which runs from July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2019 – the unit’s sixth anniversary.

Much of PIPCU’s more recent activity appears to have been focused in two key areas, both operated under its ‘Operation Creative’ banner. The first concerns PIPCU’s Infringing Website List, which aims to deter advertisers from inadvertently finding ‘pirate’ sites.

Earlier this year, PIPCU claimed success after revealing a 64% drop in “mainstream advertising” revenue on 200 unauthorized platforms between January 2016 and January 2017. More recently, PIPCU revealed that gambling advertising, which is often seen on ‘pirate’ platforms, had reduced by 87% on IWL sites over the previous 12 months.

Finally, PIPCU has been taking action alongside local police forces, FACT, Sky, Virgin, BT, and The Premier League, against suppliers of so-called ‘fully loaded’ set-top boxes, many featuring Kodi bundled with illicit third party addons. However, after a fairly sustained initial flurry, the last publicized operation was in February 2017.

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

Mod your Nerf gun with a Pi

Post Syndicated from Janina Ander original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/mod-nerf-gun-pi/

Michael Darby, who blogs at 314reactor, has created a new Raspberry Pi build, and it’s pretty darn cool. Though it’s not the first Raspberry Pi-modded Nerf gun we’ve seen, it’s definitely one of the most complex!

Nerf Gun Ammo Counter / Range Finder – Raspberry Pi

An ammo counter and range finder made from a Raspberry Pi for a Nerf Gun.

Nerf guns

Nerf guns are toy dart guns that have been on the market since the early 1990s. They are popular with kids and adults who enjoy playing paintball, laser tag, and first-person shooter video games. Michael loves Nerf guns, and he wanted to give his toy a sci-fi overhaul, making it look and function more like a gun that an avatar might use in Half-Life, Quake, or Doom.

Modding a Nerf gun

A busy and creative member of the Raspberry Pi community, Michael has previously delighted us with his Windows 98 wristwatch. Now, he has upgraded his Nerf gun with a rangefinder and an ammo counter by adding a Pi, a Pimoroni Rainbow HAT, and some sensors.

Setting up a rangefinder was straightforward. Michael fixed an ultrasonic distance sensor pointing in the direction of the gun’s barrel. Live information about how far away he is from his target is shown on the Rainbow HAT’s alphanumeric display.

View of Michael Darby's nerf gun range finder

To create an ammo counter, Michael had to follow a more circuitous route. Since he couldn’t think of a way to read out how many darts are in the Nerf gun’s magazine, he ended up counting how many darts have been shot instead. This data is collected via a proximity sensor, a device that can measure shorter distances than an ultrasonic sensor. Michael aimed the sensor towards the end of the barrel, attaching it with Blu-Tack.

View of Michael Darby's nerf gun proximity sensor

The number of shots left in the magazine is indicated by the seven LEDs above the Rainbow HAT’s alphanumeric display. The countdown works for more than seven darts, thanks to colour coding: the LEDs count down first in red, then in orange, and finally in green.

In a Python script running on the Pi, Michael has included a default number of shots per magazine. When he changes a magazine, he uses one of the HAT’s buttons as a ‘Reload’ button, resetting the counter. He has also set up the HAT so that the number of available shots can be entered manually instead.

Nerf gun modding tutorial

On Michael’s blog you will find a thorough step-by-step guide to how he created this build. He has also included his code, and links to all the components, software installation guides, and test scripts he has used. So head on over there if you’re keen to mod your own nerf gun like this, and take a look at some of his other projects while you’re there!

Michael welcomes suggestions for how to improve upon his mods, especially for how to count shots in a magazine automatically. Do you have an idea? Let us—and him—know in the comments!

Toy mods

Over the years, we’ve covered quite a few fun toy upgrades, and some that may have to be approached with caution. The Pi-powered busy board for babies, the ‘weaponized’ teddy bear, and the inevitable smart Fisher Price phone are just a few from our archives.

What’s your favourite childhood toy, and how could it be improved by the addition of a Pi? Share your ideas with us in the comments below.

The post Mod your Nerf gun with a Pi appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

MPAA Wins Movie Piracy Case in China After Failed Anti-Piracy Deal

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-wins-movie-piracy-case-in-china-after-failed-anti-piracy-deal-170822/

As one of China’s top 10 Internet companies, Xunlei is a massive operation with hundreds of millions of monthly users.

Among other file-sharing ventures, Xunlei operates ‘Thunder’, the world’s most popular torrent client. This and other almost inevitable copyright-related issues put the company on the radar of the MPAA.

With Xunlei pursuing an IPO in the United States in 2014, relationships with the MPAA began to thaw, resulting in the breakthrough signing of a Content Protection Agreement (CPA) requiring Xunlei to protect MPAA studio content including movies and TV shows.

But in October 2014, with things clearly not going to plan, the MPAA reported Xunlei to the U.S. government, complaining of rampant piracy on the service. In January 2015, the MPAA stepped up a gear and sued Xunlei for copyright infringement.

“For too long we have witnessed valuable creative content being taken and monetized without the permission of the copyright owner. That has to stop and stop now,” said MPAA Asia-Pacific chief Mike Ellis.

Now, more than two-and-a-half years later, the case has come to a close. Yesterday, the Shenzhen Nanshan District People’s Court found Xunlei Networking Technologies Co. guilty of copyright infringement.

The Court found that Xunlei made 28 movie titles (belonging to companies including Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Disney and Warner Bros.) available to the public via its platforms without proper authorization, “in serious violation” of the movie group’s rights.

Xunlei was ordered to cease-and-desist and told to pay compensation of 1.4 million yuan ($210,368) plus the MPA’s litigation costs of $24,400. In its original complaint, the MPA demanded a public apology from Xunlei but it’s unclear whether that forms part of the ruling. The outcome was welcomed by the MPA.

“We are heartened that the court in Shenzhen has found in favor of strong copyright,” said MPAA Asia-Pacific chief Mike Ellis.

“The legitimate Chinese film and television industry has worked hard to provide audiences with a wide range of legal options for their audio-visual entertainment — a marketplace that has flourished because of the rights afforded to copyright owners under the law.”

How the MPAA and Xunlei move ahead from here is unclear. This case has taken more than two-and-a-half years to come to a conclusion so further litigation seems somewhat unlikely, if not unwieldy. Then there’s the question of the anti-piracy agreement signed in 2014 and whether that is still on the table.

As previously revealed, the agreement not only compelled Xunlei to use pre-emptive content filtering technology but also required the platform to terminate the accounts of people who attempt to infringe copyright in any way.

“[The] filter will identify each and every instance of a user attempting to infringe a studio work, by uploading or downloading,” an internal MPAA document revealed.

All that being said, the document also contained advice for the MPAA not to sue Xunlei, so at this point anything could happen.

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

Court Orders Aussie ISPs to Block Dozens of Pirate Sites

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-aussie-isps-to-block-dozens-of-pirate-sites-170818/

Rather than taking site operators to court, copyright holders increasingly demand that Internet providers should block access to ‘pirate’ domains.

As a result, courts all around the world have ordered ISPs to block subscriber access to various pirate sites.

This is also happening in Australia where the first blockades were issued late last year. In December, the Federal Court ordered ISPs to block The Pirate Bay and several other sites, which happened soon after.

However, as is often the case with website blocking, one order is not enough as there are still plenty of pirate sites and proxies readily available. So, several rightsholders including movie studio Village Roadshow and local broadcaster Foxtel went back to court.

Today the Federal Court ruled on two applications that cover 59 pirate sites in total, including many popular torrent and streaming portals.

The first order was issued by Justice John Nicholas, who directed several Internet providers including IINet, Telstra, and TPG to block access to several pirate sites. The request came from Village Roadshow, which was backed by several major Hollywood studios.

The order directs the ISPs to stop passing on traffic to 41 torrent and streaming platforms including Demonoid, RARBG, EZTV, YTS, Gomovies, and Fmovies. The full list of blocked domains is even longer, as it also covers several proxies.

“The infringement or facilitation of infringement by the Online Locations is flagrant and reflect a blatant disregard for the rights of copyright owners,” the order reads.

“By way of illustration, one of the Online Locations is accessible via the domain name ‘istole.it’ and it and many others include notices encouraging users to implement technology to frustrate any legal action that might be taken by copyright owners.”

In a separate order handed down by Federal Court Judge Stephen Burley, another 17 sites are ordered blocked following a request from Foxtel. This includes popular pirate sites such as 1337x, Torlock, Putlocker, YesMovies, Vumoo, and LosMovies.

The second order also includes a wide variety of alternative locations, including proxies, which brings the total number of targeted domain names to more than 160.

As highlighted by SHM, the orders coincide with the launch of a new anti-piracy campaign dubbed “The Price of Piracy,” which is organized by Creative Content Australia. Lori Flekser, Executive director of the non-profit organization, believes that the blockades will help to significantly deter piracy.

“Not only is there decreasing traffic to pirate sites but there is a subsequent increase in traffic to legal sites,” she said.

At the same time, she warns people not to visit proxy and mirror sites, as these could be dangerous. This message is also repeated by her organization’s campaign, which warns that pirate sites can be filled with ransomware, spyware, trojans, viruses, bots, rootkits and worms.

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

Artists Protest RIAA for Trampling on Their Moral Rights

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/artists-protest-riaa-for-trampling-on-their-moral-rights-170817/

Most people who create something like to be credited for their work. Whether you make a video, song, photo, or blog post, it feels ‘right’ to receive recognition.

The right to be credited is part of the so-called “moral rights,” which are baked into many copyright laws around the world, adopted at the international level through the Berne Convention.

However, in the United States, this is not the case. The US didn’t sign the Berne Convention right away and opted out from the “moral rights” provision when it eventually joined.

Now that the U.S. Copyright Office is looking into ways to improve current copyright law, the issue has been brought to the forefront again. The Government recently completed a consultation to hear the thoughts of various stakeholders, which resulted in several noteworthy contributions.

As it turns out, the RIAA doesn’t want artists, such as songwriters, to have moral rights. Crediting everyone who’s involved in making a song can be confusing and complicated the group notes, arguing against the addition of a new statutory attribution right.

The RIAA highlights that it would be costly for streaming services to credit everyone involved in the creative process. In addition, they stress that the likes of Spotify might not have the screen real estate to attribute all creators, without ruining the user experience with long lists of names.

“If a statutory attribution right suddenly required these services to provide attribution to others involved in the creative process, that would presumably require costly changes to their user interfaces and push them up against the size limitations of their display screens,” the RIAA writes.

These comments don’t sit well with songwriters and other creators around the world, who feel that the RIAA is putting trivial metadata issues above their rights. In a protest against the RIAA’s stance, several songwriter groups around the world are now joining hands to show their discontent.

The British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA), Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC), Songwriters Guild of America (SGA), Music Creators North America (MCNA), Council of Music Creators (CMC), and several others, have sent a strongly worded open letter to the RIAA accusing the record label group of betrayal.

“The RIAA’s argument prioritizes the inconvenience of dealing with accurate metadata over the principle of the protection of the rights of the people upon whose work the music business is built,” the letter reads.

“More fundamentally, RIAA’s comments are taken by many in the music creator community as a betrayal of our joint commitment to expand opportunities for creators. Unfortunately, this divergence of views gives our common adversaries an opportunity to divide our community.”

The groups warn that without proper attribution, songwriters and other contributors risk not receiving any compensation for the work they do. This puts the RIAA in the same camp as those who want to weaken copyright in general, the letter notes.

“Without accurate metadata, contributors to a work risk not getting paid. That’s a moral dilemma intrinsically linked to the issue of moral rights — and on this issue the RIAA has now aligned itself with those who seek to enfeeble IP rights.”

The RIAA’s stance goes even further than that of Creative Commons and the “copyleft,” according to the groups.

“Even anti-copyright groups like Creative Commons understand the importance of attribution. If the RIAA is seen as less artist-friendly than Creative Commons, the copyleft and all who seek to undervalue our work will benefit.”

While Creative Commons has more flexible views on copyright than the average entertainment industry company, describing it as “anti-copyright” goes a bit far. Still, the groups send a strong message to the RIAA, that the organization’s stance on moral rights is abhorrent.

The songwriter and artist groups stress that the RIAA might shoot itself in the foot, as it’s distancing the people it needs to further its interests around the globe. As for the metadata problems, they believe that the streaming platforms and other services will come up with a proper solution eventually.

“We believe there’s no doubt music platforms will come up with innovative and effective ways to give credit. Certainly there’s no need to set expectations at rock bottom as the RIAA did in their comments,” the groups write in their letter.

The groups urge the RIAA to revise its views and start collaborating with creators to address specific implementation problems. The record labels and creators should stand together as one, instead of going against each other.

It will be interesting to see if and how the RIAA responds to the critique.

While the US Government has yet to decide on the moral rights issue, in other countries the attribution right is taken very seriously. Just recently, a District Court in Isreal awarded a local music composer $223,000 in statutory damages because his name was removed from the credits of an online kids animation series.

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

Game of Thrones Pirates Arrested For Leaking Episode Early

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/game-of-thrones-pirates-arrested-for-leaking-episode-early-170814/

Over the past several years, Game of Thrones has become synonymous with fantastic drama and story telling on the one hand, and Internet piracy on the other. It’s the most pirated TV show in history, hands down.

With the new season well underway, another GoT drama began to unfold early August when the then-unaired episode “The Spoils of War” began to circulate on various file-sharing and streaming sites. The leak only trumped the official release by a few days, but that didn’t stop people downloading in droves.

As previously reported, the leaked episode stated that it was “For Internal Viewing Only” at the top of the screen and on the bottom right sported a “Star India Pvt Ltd” watermark. The company commented shortly after.

“We take this breach very seriously and have immediately initiated forensic investigations at our and the technology partner’s end to swiftly determine the cause. This is a grave issue and we are taking appropriate legal remedial action,” a spokesperson said.

Now, just ten days later, that investigation has already netted its first victims. Four people have reportedly been arrested in India for leaking the episode before it aired.

“We investigated the case and have arrested four individuals for unauthorized publication of the fourth episode from season seven,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Akbar Pathan told AFP.

The report indicates that a complaint was filed by a Mumbai-based company that was responsible for storing and processing the TV episodes for an app. It has been named locally as Prime Focus Technologies, which markets itself as a Netflix “Preferred Vendor”.

It’s claimed that at least some of the men had access to login credentials for Game of Thrones episodes which were then abused for the purposes of leaking.

Local media identified the men as Bhaskar Joshi, Alok Sharma and Abhishek Ghadiyal, who were employed by Prime Focus, and Mohamad Suhail, a former employee, who was responsible for leaking the episode onto the Internet.

All of the men were based in Bangalore and were interrogated “throughout the night” at their workplace on August 11. Star India welcomed the arrests and thanked the authorities for their swift action.

“We are deeply grateful to the police for their swift and prompt action. We believe that valuable intellectual property is a critical part of the development of the creative industry and strict enforcement of the law is essential to protecting it,” the company said in a statement.

“We at Star India and Novi Digital Entertainment Private Limited stand committed and ready to help the law enforcement agencies with any technical assistance and help they may require in taking the investigation to its logical conclusion.”

The men will be held in custody until August 21 while investigations continue.

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

MPAA Revenue Stabilizes, Chris Dodd Earns $3.5 Million

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-revenue-stabilizes-chris-dodd-earns-3-5-million170813/

Protecting the interests of Hollywood, the MPAA has been heavily involved in numerous anti-piracy efforts around the world in recent years.

Through its involvement in the shutdowns of Popcorn Time, YIFY, isoHunt, Hotfile, Megaupload and several other platforms, the MPAA has worked hard to target piracy around the globe.

Perhaps just as importantly, the group lobbies lawmakers globally while managing anti-piracy campaigns both in and outside the US, including the Creative Content UK program.

All this work doesn’t come for free, obviously, so the MPAA relies on six major movie studios for financial support. After its revenues plummeted a few years ago, they have steadily recovered and according to its latest tax filing, the MPAA’s total income is now over $72 million.

The IRS filing, covering the fiscal year 2015, reveals that the movie studios contributed $65 million, the same as a year earlier. Overall revenue has stabilized as well, after a few years of modest growth.

Going over the numbers, we see that salaries make up a large chunk of the expenses. Former Senator Chris Dodd, the MPAA’s Chairman and CEO, is the highest paid employee with a total income of more than $3.5 million, including a $250,000 bonus.

It was recently announced that Dodd will leave the MPAA next month. He will be replaced by Charles Rivkin, another political heavyweight. Rivkin previously served as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs in the Obama administration.

In addition to Dodd, there are two other employees who made over a million in 2015, Global General Counsel Steve Fabrizio and Diane Strahan, the MPAA’s Chief Operating Officer.

Looking at some of the other expenses we see that the MPAA’s lobbying budget remained stable at $4.2 million. Another $4.4 million went to various grants, while legal costs totaled $7.2 million that year.

More than two million dollars worth of legal expenses were paid to the US law firm Jenner & Block, which represented the movie studios in various court cases. In addition, the MPAA paid more than $800,000 to the UK law firm Wiggin, which assisted the group in local site-blocking efforts.

Finally, it’s worth looking at the various gifts and grants the MPAA hands out. As reported last year, the group handsomely contributes to various research projects. This includes a recurring million dollar grant for Carnegie Mellon’s ‘Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics’ (IDEA), which researches various piracy related topics.

IDEA co-director Rahul Telang previously informed us that the gift is used to hire researchers and pay for research materials. It is not tied to a particular project.

We also see $70,000+ in donations for both the Democratic and Republican Attorneys General associations. The purpose of the grants is listed as “general support.” Interestingly, just recently over a dozen Attorneys General released a public service announcement warning the public to stay away from pirate sites.

These type of donations and grants are nothing new and are a regular part of business across many industries. Still, they are worth keeping in mind.

It will be interesting to see which direction the MPAA takes in the years to come. Under Chris Dodd it has booked a few notable successes, but there is still a long way to go before the piracy situation is somewhat under control.

—

MPAA’s full form 990 was published in Guidestar recently and a copy is available here (pdf).

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

DMCA Used to Remove Ad Server URL From Easylist Ad Blocklist

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/dmca-used-to-remove-ad-server-url-from-easylist-ad-blocklist-170811/

The default business model on the Internet is “free” for consumers. Users largely expect websites to load without paying a dime but of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. To this end, millions of websites are funded by advertising revenue.

Sensible sites ensure that any advertising displayed is unobtrusive to the visitor but lots seem to think that bombarding users with endless ads, popups, and other hindrances is the best way to do business. As a result, ad blockers are now deployed by millions of people online.

In order to function, ad-blocking tools – such as uBlock Origin or Adblock – utilize lists of advertising domains compiled by third parties. One of the most popular is Easylist, which is distributed by authors fanboy, MonztA, Famlam, and Khrinunder, under dual Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike and GNU General Public Licenses.

With the freedom afforded by those licenses, copyright tends not to figure high on the agenda for Easylist. However, a legal problem that has just raised its head is causing serious concern among those in the ad-blocking community.

Two days ago a somewhat unusual commit appeared in the Easylist repo on Github. As shown in the image below, a domain URL previously added to Easylist had been removed following a DMCA takedown notice filed with Github.

Domain text taken down by DMCA?

The DMCA notice in question has not yet been published but it’s clear that it targets the domain ‘functionalclam.com’. A user called ‘ameshkov’ helpfully points out a post by a new Github user called ‘DMCAHelper’ which coincided with the start of the takedown process more than three weeks ago.

A domain in a list circumvents copyright controls?

Aside from the curious claims of a URL “circumventing copyright access controls” (domains themselves cannot be copyrighted), the big questions are (i) who filed the complaint and (ii) who operates Functionalclam.com? The domain WHOIS is hidden but according to a helpful sleuth on Github, it’s operated by anti ad-blocking company Admiral.

Ad-blocking means money down the drain….

If that is indeed the case, we have the intriguing prospect of a startup attempting to protect its business model by using a novel interpretation of copyright law to have a domain name removed from a list. How this will pan out is unclear but a notice recently published on Functionalclam.com suggests the route the company wishes to take.

“This domain is used by digital publishers to control access to copyrighted content in accordance with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and understand how visitors are accessing their copyrighted content,” the notice begins.

Combined with the comments by DMCAHelper on Github, this statement suggests that the complainants believe that interference with the ad display process (ads themselves could be the “copyrighted content” in question) represents a breach of section 1201 of the DMCA.

If it does, that could have huge consequences for online advertising but we will need to see the original DMCA notice to have a clearer idea of what this is all about. Thus far, Github hasn’t published it but already interest is growing. A representative from the EFF has already contacted the Easylist team, so this battle could heat up pretty quickly.

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

Video playback on freely-arranged screens with info-beamer

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/info-beamer/

When the creator of the digital signage software info-beamer, Florian Wesch, shared this project on Reddit, I don’t think he was prepared for the excited reaction of the community. Florian’s post, which by now has thousands of upvotes, showcased the power of info-beamer. Not only can the software display a video via multiple Raspberry Pis, it also automatically rejigs the output to match the size and angle of the Pis’ monitors.

info-beamer raspberry pi

Wait…what?

I know, right? We’ve seen many video-based Raspberry Pi projects, but this is definitely one of the most impressive ones. While those of us with a creative streak were imagining cool visual arts installations using monitors and old televisions of various sizes, the more technically-minded puzzled over how Florian pulled this off.

It’s obvious that info-beamer has manifold potential uses. But we had absolutely zero understanding of how it works!

How does info-beamer do this?

Lucky for us, Florian returned to Reddit a few days later with a how-to video, explaining in layman’s terms how you too can get a video to play on a multi-screen, multi-Pi setup.

Automatic video wall configuration with info-beamer hosted

This is an exciting new feature I’ve made available for the info-beamer hosted digital signage system: You can create a video wall consisting of freely arranged screens in seconds. The screens don’t even have to be planar. Just rotate and place them as you like.

First you’ll need to set up info-beamer, which will allow you to introduce multiple Raspberry Pis, and their attached monitors, into a joint network. To make the software work, there’s some Python code you have to write yourself, but hands-on tutorials and example code exist to make this fairly easy, even if you have little experience in Python.

info-beamer raspberry pi

As you can see in Florian’s video, info-beamer assigns each monitor its own, unique section of video. Taking a photo of the monitors and uploading it to a site provides enough information for the software to play a movie trailer split across multiple screens.

info-beamer raspberry pi

A step that’s missing in the video, but that Florian described on Reddit, is how to configure the screens via a drag-and-drop interface so that the software recognizes them. Once this is done, your video display is good to go.

For more information about info-beamer check out the website, and follow the official Twitter account for updates.

Using Raspberry Pi in video-based projects

Since it has an HDMI port, connecting your Raspberry Pi to any compatible monitor, including your television, is an easy task. And with a little tweaking and soldering you can even connect your Pi to that ageing SCART TV/Video combo you might have in the loft.

As I said earlier, there’s an abundance of Pi-powered video-based projects. Many digital art installations, and even commercial media devices, rely on the Raspberry Pi because of its low cost, small size, and high-quality multimedia capabilities.

Have you used a Raspberry Pi in a video-playback project? Share it with us below – we’d love to see it!

The post Video playback on freely-arranged screens with info-beamer appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Foxtel Targets 128 Torrent & Streaming Domains For Blocking Down Under

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/foxtel-targets-128-torrent-streaming-domains-for-blocking-down-under-170808/

In 2015, Australia passed controversial legislation which allows ‘pirate’ sites located on servers overseas to be blocked at the ISP level.

“These offshore sites are not operated by noble spirits fighting for the freedom of the internet, they are run by criminals who profit from stealing other people’s creative endeavors,” commented then Foxtel chief executive Richard Freudenstein.

Before, during and after its introduction, Foxtel has positioned itself as a keen supporter of the resulting Section 115a of the Copyright Act. And in December 2016, with the law firmly in place, it celebrated success after obtaining a blocking injunction against The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound and isoHunt.

In May, Foxtel filed a new application, demanding that almost 50 local ISPs block what was believed to be a significant number of ‘pirate’ sites not covered by last year’s order.

Today the broadcasting giant was back in Federal Court, Sydney, to have this second application heard under Section 115a. It was revealed that the application contains 128 domains, each linked to movie and TV piracy.

According to ComputerWorld, the key sites targeted are as follows: YesMovies, Vumoo, LosMovies, CartoonHD, Putlocker, Watch Series 1, Watch Series 2, Project Free TV 1, Project Free TV 2, Watch Episodes, Watch Episode Series, Watch TV Series, The Dare Telly, Putlocker9.is, Putlocker9.to, Torlock and 1337x.

The Foxtel application targets both torrent and streaming sites but given the sample above, it seems that the latter is currently receiving the most attention. Streaming sites are appearing at a rapid rate and can even be automated to some extent, so this battle could become extremely drawn out.

Indeed, Justice Burley, who presided over the case this morning, described the website-blocking process (which necessarily includes targeting mirrors, proxies and replacement domains) as akin to “whack-a-mole”.

“Foxtel sees utility in orders of this nature,” counsel for Foxtel commented in response. “It’s important to block these sites.”

In presenting its application, Foxtel conducted live demonstrations of Yes Movies, Watch Series, 1337x, and Putlocker. It focused on the Australian prison drama series Wentworth, which has been running on Foxtel since 2013, but also featured tests of Game of Thrones.

Justice Burley told the court that since he’s a fan of the series, a spoiler-free piracy presentation would be appreciated. If the hearing had taken place a few days earlier, spoilers may have been possible. Last week, the latest episode of the show leaked onto the Internet from an Indian source before its official release.

Justice Burley’s decision will be handed down at a later date, but it’s unlikely there will be any serious problems with Foxtel’s application. After objecting to many aspects of blocking applications in the past, Australia’s ISPs no longer appear during these hearings. They are now paid AU$50 per domain blocked by companies such as Foxtel and play little more than a technical role in the process.

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

Pimoroni is 5 now!

Post Syndicated from guru original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pimoroni-is-5-now/

Long read written by Pimoroni’s Paul Beech, best enjoyed over a cup o’ grog.

Every couple of years, I’ve done a “State of the Fleet” update here on the Raspberry Pi blog to tell everyone how the Sheffield Pirates are doing. Half a decade has gone by in a blink, but reading back over the previous posts shows that a lot has happened in that time!

TL;DR We’re an increasingly medium-sized design/manufacturing/e-commerce business with workshops in Sheffield, UK, and Essen, Germany, and we employ almost 40 people. We’re totally lovely. Thanks for supporting us!

 

We’ve come a long way, baby

I’m sitting looking out the window at Sheffield-on-Sea and feeling pretty lucky about how things are going. In the morning, I’ll be flying east for Maker Faire Tokyo with Niko (more on him later), and to say hi to some amazing people in Shenzhen (and to visit Huaqiangbei, of course). This is after I’ve already visited this year’s Maker Faires in New York, San Francisco, and Berlin.

Pimoroni started out small, but we’ve grown like weeds, and we’re steadily sauntering towards becoming a medium-sized business. That’s thanks to fantastic support from the people who buy our stuff and spread the word. In return, we try to be nice, friendly, and human in everything we do, and to make exciting things, ideally with our own hands here in Sheffield.

Pimoroni soldering

Handmade with love

We’ve made it onto a few ‘fastest-growing’ lists, and we’re in the top 500 of the Inc. 5000 Europe list. Adafruit did it first a few years back, and we’ve never gone wrong when we’ve followed in their footsteps.

The slightly weird nature of Pimoroni means we get listed as either a manufacturing or e-commerce business. In reality, we’re about four or five companies in one shell, which is very much against the conventions of “how business is done”. However, having seen what Adafruit, SparkFun, and Seeed do, we’re more than happy to design, manufacture, and sell our stuff in-house, as well as stocking the best stuff from across the maker community.

Pimoroni stocks

Product and process

The whole process of expansion has not been without its growing pains. We’re just under 40 people strong now, and have an outpost in Germany (also hilariously far from the sea for piratical activities). This means we’ve had to change things quickly to improve and automate processes, so that the wheels won’t fall off as things get bigger. Process optimization is incredibly interesting to a geek, especially the making sure that things are done well, that mistakes are easy to spot and to fix, and that nothing is missed.

At the end of 2015, we had a step change in how busy we were, and our post room and support started to suffer. As a consequence, we implemented measures to become more efficient, including small but important things like checking in parcels with a barcode scanner attached to a Raspberry Pi. That Pi has been happily running on the same SD card for a couple of years now without problems 😀

Pimoroni post room

Going postal?

We also hired a full-time support ninja, Matt, to keep the experience of getting stuff from us light and breezy and to ensure that any problems are sorted. He’s had hugely positive impact already by making the emails and replies you see more friendly. Of course, he’s also started using the laser cutters for tinkering projects. It’d be a shame to work at Pimoroni and not get to use all the wonderful toys, right?

Employing all the people

You can see some of the motley crew we employ here and there on the Pimoroni website. And if you drop by at the Raspberry Pi Birthday Party, Pi Wars, Maker Faires, Deer Shed Festival, or New Scientist Live in September, you’ll be seeing new Pimoroni faces as we start to engage with people more about what we do. On top of that, we’re starting to make proper videos (like Sandy’s soldering guide), as opposed to the 101 episodes of Bilge Tank we recorded in a rather off-the-cuff and haphazard fashion. Although that’s the beauty of Bilge Tank, right?

Pimoroni soldering

Such soldering setup

As Emma, Sandy, Lydia, and Tanya gel as a super creative team, we’re starting to create more formal educational resources, and to make kits that are suitable for a wider audience. Things like our Pi Zero W kits are products of their talents.

Emma is our new Head of Marketing. She’s really ‘The Only Marketing Person Who Would Ever Fit In At Pimoroni’, having been a core part of the Sheffield maker scene since we hung around with one Ben Nuttall, in the dark days before Raspberry Pi was a thing.

Through a series of fortunate coincidences, Niko and his equally talented wife Mena were there when we cut the first Pibow in 2012. They immediately pitched in to help us buy our second laser cutter so we could keep up with demand. They have been supporting Pimoroni with sourcing in East Asia, and now Niko has become a member of the Pirates’ Council and the Head of Engineering as we’re increasing the sophistication and scale of the things we do. The Unicorn HAT HD is one of his masterpieces.

Pimoroni devices

ALL the HATs!

We see ourselves as a wonderful island of misfit toys, and it feels good to have the best toy shop ever, and to support so many lovely people. Business is about more than just profits.

Where do we go to, me hearties?

So what are our plans? At the moment we’re still working absolutely flat-out as demand from wholesalers, retailers, and customers increases. We thought Raspberry Pi was big, but it turns out it’s just getting started. Near the end of 2016, it seemed to reach a whole new level of popularity—and still we continue to meet people to whom we have to explain what a Pi is. It’s a good problem to have.

We need a bigger space, but it’s been hard to find somewhere suitable in Sheffield that won’t mean we’re stuck on an industrial estate miles from civilisation. That would be bad for the crew—we like having world-class burritos on our doorstep.

The good news is, it looks like our search is at an end! Just in time for the arrival of our ‘Super-Turbo-Death-Star’ new production line, which will enable to make devices in a bigger, better, faster, more ‘Now now now!’ fashion \o/

Pimoroni warehouse

Spacious, but not spacious enough!

We’ve got lots of treasure in the pipeline, but we want to pick up the pace of development even more and create many new HATs, pHATs, and SHIMs, e.g. for environmental sensing and audio applications. Picade will also be getting some love to make it slicker and more hackable.

We’re also starting to flirt with adding more engineering and production capabilities in-house. The plan is to try our hand at anodising, powder-coating, and maybe even injection-moulding if we get the space and find the right machine. Learning how to do things is amazing, and we love having an idea and being able to bring it to life in almost no time at all.

Pimoroni production

This is where the magic happens

Fanks!

There are so many people involved in supporting our success, and some people we love for just existing and doing wonderful things that make us want to do better. The biggest shout-outs go to Liz, Eben, Gordon, James, all the Raspberry Pi crew, and Limor and pt from Adafruit, for being the most supportive guiding lights a young maker company could ever need.

A note from us

It is amazing for us to witness the growth of businesses within the Raspberry Pi ecosystem. Pimoroni is a wonderful example of an organisation that is creating opportunities for makers within its local community, and the company is helping to reinvigorate Sheffield as the heart of making in the UK.

If you’d like to take advantage of the great products built by the Pirates, Monkeys, Robots, and Ninjas of Sheffield, you should do it soon: Pimoroni are giving everyone 20% off their homemade tech until 6 August.

Pimoroni, from all of us here at Pi Towers (both in the UK and USA), have a wonderful birthday, and many a grog on us!

The post Pimoroni is 5 now! appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

EFF: Bassel Khartabil, In Memoriam

Post Syndicated from ris original https://lwn.net/Articles/729644/rss

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports
that Bassel Khartabil, Syrian open source developer, blogger,
entrepreneur, hackerspace founder, and free culture advocate, was executed
by the Syrian authorities. “Bassel was a central figure in the
global free culture movement, connecting it and promoting it to Syria’s
emerging tech community as it existed before the country was ransacked by
civil war. He co-founded Aiki Lab, Syria’s first hackerspace, in Damascus
in 2010. He was a contributor to Mozilla’s Firefox browser and the Syrian
lead for Creative Commons. His influence went beyond Syria, however: he was
a key attendee at the Middle East’s bloggers’ conferences, and played a
vital role in the negotiations in Doha in 2010 that led to a common
language for discussing fair use and copyright across the Arab-speaking
world.” (Thanks to Paul Wise)

5…4…3…2…1…SPACESHIP BUNK BED!

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/spaceship-bunk-bed/

Many of us have created basic forts in our childhood bedrooms using pillows, sheets, and stuffed toys. Pete Dearing’s sons, meanwhile, get to play and sleep in an incredible spaceship bunk bed.

A spaceship bunk bed with functional lights, levers, buttons, and knobs.

I’m not jealous at all.

Not. At. All.

spaceship bunk bed Raspberry Pi

All the best beds have LEDs.

Building a spaceship bunk bed

Pete purchased plans for a spacecraft-shaped bunk bed online, and set out to build its MDF frame. Now, I don’t know about you, but for young me, having a bunk bed shaped like a spaceship would have been enough – tiny humans have such incredible imagination. But it wasn’t enough for Pete. He had witnessed his children’s obsession with elevator buttons, mobile phones, and the small control panel he’d made for them using switches and an old tool box. He knew he had to go big or go home.

spaceship bunk bed Raspberry Pi

While he was cutting out pieces for the bed frame, Pete asked the boys some creative input, and then adjusted the bed’s plans to include a functional cockpit and extra storage (for moon boots, spacesuits, and flags for staking claims, no doubt).

Wiring a spaceship bunk bed

After realising he hadn’t made enough allowance for the space taken up by the cockpit’s dials, levers, and switches, Pete struggled a little to fit everything in place inside the bunk bed.

spaceship bunk bed Raspberry Pi

“Ground Control to Major Sleepy…”

But it all worked out, and the results were lights, buttons, and fun aplenty. Finally, as icing on the build’s proverbial cake, Pete added sound effects, powered by a Raspberry Pi, and headsets fitted with microphones.

spaceship bunk bed Raspberry Pi

“Red Leader standing by…”

The electronics of the build run on a 12V power supply. To ensure his boys’ safety, and so that they will actually be able to sleep, Pete integrated a timer for the bed’s ‘entertainment system’.

Find more information about the spaceship bunk bed and photos of the project here.

So where do I get mine?

If you want to apply to be adopted by Pete, you can head to www.alex-is-first-in-line.com/seriously_me_first. Alternatively, you could build your own fantastic Pi-powered bed, and add lights and sounds of your choosing. How about a Yellow Submarine bed with a dashboard of Beatles songs? Or an X-Wing bed with flight and weapon controls? Oh, oh, how about a bed shaped like one of the cars from Jurassic Park, or like a Top Gun jet?

Yup…I definitely need a new bed.

While I go take measurements and get the power tools out, why not share your own ideas with us in the comments? Have you pimped your kid’s room with a Raspberry Pi (maybe like this)? Or do you have plans to incorporate lights and noise into something wonderful you’re making for a friend or relation? We want to know.

And I want a spaceship bunk bed!

The post 5…4…3…2…1…SPACESHIP BUNK BED! appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Break a world record with Moonhack 2017

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/moonhack-2017/

The team at Code Club Australia set a world record last year by gathering 10,207 Australian kids together to participate in their coding event Moonhack. But they are not going to rest on their laurels: this year, they’ve set their sights even higher with their event on 15 August.

Moonhack Code Club Australia

What is Moonhack?

In honour of the Apollo 11 landing, Code Club Australia created a series of space-themed coding activities for their Moonhack event in July 2016. Their aim? To bring together as many kids as possible from all over Australia, to get them to code and have fun, and to hopefully establish a world record along the way.

Code Club Australia #MoonHack

Watch the Sunrise coverage of Code Club Australia World Record ‪#‎Moonhack‬ event – Launching Wed 20th July 2016 18:00 AEST – Register Now: www.moonhack.com.au

And they did exactly that! 10,207 kids completed Moonhack projects, which constitutes the largest number of children coding on one day ever recorded.

Moonhack 2017

With the success of the 2016 event spurring them on, the Code Club Australia team have scaled up their efforts this year. By opening Moonhack to kids across the globe, they want to spread enthusiasm for coding everywhere. And why not break their own world record in the process? Every kid in the world can take part in the event, as the website explains:

“Moonhack is for everyone. Moonhack is inclusive, not exclusive, because coding is for everyone, no matter their skill level or age – kids new to code, coding whizz kids, and anyone who wants to try out coding for the first time, or coding pros who want to get creative.”

Participants between the ages of 8 and 18 are invited to form teams and create their own space-themed project – or use one of the provided examples in Scratch, ScratchJr, or Python. If you’re outside the age range, don’t worry – you can still take part, but your project won’t be counted toward the world record attempt.

Moonhack Code Club Australia

The sky is no longer the limit…

Participating teams submit their complete project to the Moonhack website as a link, screenshot, or file upload. All successful participants will receive a certificate to print and hang proudly on their wall. Woohoo!

How do we take part?

Teams will need to be registered on the website by a facilitator. Registering will give the facilitator access to a whole host of helpful tips for how to help their team out. Then, on Moonhack day, 15 August, the facilitator can upload the team’s completed project. If you can’t host an event for your team on 15 August, don’t worry – simply get the kids to complete the project beforehand. For more information go to the Moonhack website, where you can also find coding projects in several human and programming languages.

So what are you waiting for? Get together with the code-loving young people in your life, put your thinking hats on, get programming, and have the chance to set a new world record!

The post Break a world record with Moonhack 2017 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Portugal’s Pirate Site-Blocking System Works “Great,” Study Shows

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/portugals-pirate-site-blocking-system-works-great-study-shows-170728/

Rather than taking site operators to court, copyright holders increasingly demand that Internet providers should block access to ‘pirate’ domains instead.

As a result, courts all around the world have ordered ISPs to block subscriber access to various pirate sites. But there are other ways.

In Portugal, a voluntary process was formalized through an agreement between ISPs, rightsholders, and the Ministry of Culture and the Association of Telecommunication Operators.

The voluntary deal was struck two years ago, shortly after local Internet Providers were ordered to block access to The Pirate Bay. The agreement conveniently allows copyright holders to add new pirate sites without any intervention or oversight from a court.

The MPAA is happy with the non-adversarial collaboration and praises it as the best international example of anti-piracy practices. The Hollywood group has already presented the Portuguese model to the Spanish Senate and plans to do the same before the French Senate.

Aside from a smooth process, the results of the voluntary blocking deal are also important. This is why the MPA and Portuguese anti-piracy outfit FEVIP commissioned a study into its effects.

The results, published by INCOPRO this week, show that of the 250 most-used pirate sites in Portugal, 65 are blocked. Traffic to these blocked sites decreased 56.6 percent after the blocks were implemented, contrary to a 3.9 percent increase globally.

In total, usage of the top 250 pirate sites decreased 9.3 percent, while a control group showed that the same sites enjoyed a 30.8 percent increase in usage globally.

In summary, the research confirms that traffic to blocked sites has decreased significantly. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, as these domains are blocked after all. Whether traffic over VPN or people visiting smaller pirate sites subsequently increased was not covered by the research.

Earlier research, using INCOPRO’s own methodology, has shown that while blocked domains get less traffic, many sites simply move to other domain names where they enjoy a significant and sustained boost in traffic.

The current research did look at proxy site traffic but concludes that this only substitutes a small portion of the traffic that went to pirate sites before the blockades.

“Though usage is migrating to alternate sites in some cases, this shift of usage amounts to only minor proportions of previous pre-block usage,” the report reads.

Stan McCoy, President and Managing Director of the Motion Picture Association’s EMEA region, backs the study’s findings which he says confirm that piracy can be curbed.

“At the MPA, we take a three pronged approach: make legal content easy to access, engage consumers about the negative impact of piracy, and deter piracy through the appropriate legal avenues. All stakeholders must work together as joint stewards of the creative ecosystem,” McCoy notes.

The results of INCOPRO’s research will undoubtedly be used to convince lawmakers and other stakeholders to implement a similar blocking deal elsewhere.

Or to put it into the words of Helen Saunders, head of Intelligence and Operations at INCOPRO, they might serve as inspiration.

“It’s fantastic to see that more countries are starting to take action against piracy, and are getting great results. We hope that this report will inspire even more geographies to take similar action in a concerted effort to safeguard the global entertainment industry,” Saunders says.

Ironically, while American movie studios are working hard to convince foreign ISPs and governments to jump on board, Internet subscribers in the United States can still freely access all the pirate sites they want. No website blocking plans have been sighted on Hollywood’s home turf, yet.

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

Italian ISPs Say New Copyright Amendment Infringes Human Rights

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/italian-isps-say-new-copyright-amendment-infringes-human-rights-170728/

After being spoken of in unfavorable terms by the United States Trade Representative in its Special 301 Reports, Italy achieved a sudden breakthrough in 2014.

“Italy’s removal from the Special 301 List reflects the significant steps the Government of Italy has taken to address the problem of online piracy, and the continued U.S. commitment to meaningful and sustained engagement with our critical partner Italy,” the USTR said in a special announcement.

This praise was in part due to the way Italy promised to deal with online piracy. Instead of legislating to make a piracy crackdown easier, the government handed AGCOM, the Italian Communications Regulatory Authority, the power to deal with infringement based on complaints filed by rightsholders.

Without any need for legal cases or court injunctions, at the end of March 2014, AGCOM was granted the power to have allegedly infringing content removed from sites and to have domains blocked at the ISP level.

Now, just over three years later, AGCOM has been granted even more power. Passed last week, Amendment 1.022 effectively gives AGCOM the power to order sites to not only take allegedly infringing content down but to keep it down permanently, all without intervention from the judiciary.

The decision has provoked a furious response from a body representing the country’s ISPs, which describes the “unconstitutional rules” as a way to protect the economic interests of right holders behind various creative works and live sporting events.

“This measure abolishes procedural safeguards for citizens, imposes interception obligations to Internet providers, and damages consumers by imposing technical measures that will result in increased costs,” the Italian Association of Internet Providers (AIIP) said in a statement.

According to AIIP, it is the judiciary that should have sole power over copyright infringement disputes in Italy. When other bodies such as AGCOM are given control over criminal issues, it represents a violation of both constitutional principles and EU law.

“Any rule that would require Internet Providers to filter and carry out preventive checks – as well as to remove content generated by users without a court order – is in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Community legislation on electronic communications services, and case law of the European Court of Justice,” AIIP says.

The ISP body says that AGCOM now possesses discretionary powers that even magistrates do not have, which from a technical perspective includes monitoring, interception, and blocking of user activity, a position that amounts to “gigantic state censorship.”

Only time will tell how the situation pans out but it’s crystal clear that ISPs feel that unlike the views of the copyright industry, their concerns have not been taken into consideration.

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

Hightail — Empowering Creative Collaboration in the Cloud

Post Syndicated from Ana Visneski original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/hightail-empowering-creative-collaboration-in-the-cloud/

Hightail – formerly YouSendIt – streamlines how creative work is reviewed, improved, and approved by helping more than 50 million professionals around the world get great content in front of their audiences faster. Since its debut in 2004 as a file sharing company, Hightail shifted its strategic direction to focus on delivering value-added creative collaboTagsration services and boasts a strong lineup of name-brand customers.

In today’s guest post, Hightail’s SVP of Technology Shiva Paranandi tells the company’s migration story, moving petabytes of data from on-premises to the cloud. He highlights their cloud vendor evaluation process and reasons for going all-in on AWS.

Hightail started as a way to help people easily share and store large files, but has since evolved into a creative collaboration tool. We became a place where users could not only control and share their digital assets, but also assemble their creative teams, connect with clients, develop creative workflows, and manage projects from start to finish. We now power collaboration services for major brands such as Lionsgate and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. With a growing list of domestic and international clients, we required more internal focus on product development and serving the users. We found that running our own data centers consumed more time, money, and manpower than we were willing to devote.

We needed an approach that would help us iterate more rapidly to meet customer needs and dramatically improve our time to market. We wanted to reduce data center costs and have the flexibility to scale up quickly in any given region around the globe. Setting up a data center in a new location took so long that it was limiting the pace of growth that we could achieve. In addition, we were tired of buying ahead of our needs, which meant we had storage capacity that we did not even use. We required a storage solution that was both tiered and highly scalable to reduce costs by allowing us to keep infrequently used data in inactive storage while also allowing us to resurface it quickly at the customer’s request. Our main drivers were agility and innovation, and the cloud enables these in a significant way. Given that, we decided to adopt a cloud-first policy that would enable us to spend time and money on initiatives that differentiate our business, instead of putting resources into managing our storage and computing infrastructure.

Comparing AWS Against Cloud Competitors

To kick off the migration, we did our due diligence by evaluating a variety of cloud vendors, including AWS, Google, IBM, and Microsoft. AWS stuck out as the clear winner for us. At one point, we considered combining services from multiple cloud providers to meet our needs, but decided the best route was to use AWS exclusively. When we factored in training, synchronization, support, and system availability along with other migration and management elements, it was just not practical to take a multi-cloud approach. With the best cost savings and an unmatched ecosystem of partner solutions, we did not need anyone else and chose to go all-in on AWS.

By migrating to AWS, we were able to secure the lowest cost-per-gigabyte pricing, gain access to a rich ecosystem, quickly develop in-house talent, and maintain SOC II compliance. The ecosystem was particularly important to us and set AWS apart from its competitors with its expansive list of partners. In fact, all the vendors we depend on for services such as previewing images, encoding videos, and serving up presentations were already a part of the network so we were easily able to leverage our existing investments and expertise. If we went with a different provider, it would have meant moving away from a platform that was already working so well for which was not the desired outcome for us. Also, the amount of talent we were able to build up in house on AWS technologies was astounding. Training our internal team to work with AWS was a simple process using available tools such as AWS conferences, training materials, and support.

Migrating Petabytes of Data

Going with AWS made things easier. In many instances, it gave us better functionality than what we were using in house. We moved multiple petabytes of data from on-premises storage to AWS with ease. AWS gave us great speeds with Direct Connect, so we were able to push all the data in a little more than three months with no user impact. We employed AWS Key Management Service to keep our data secure, which eased our minds through the move. We performed extensive QA testing before flipping users over to ensure low customer impact, using methods such as checksums between our data center and the data that got pushed to AWS.

Our new platform on AWS has greatly improved our user experience. We have seen huge improvement in reliability, performance, and uptime—all critical in our line of business. We are now able to achieve upload and download speeds up to 17 times faster than our previous data centers, and uptime has increased by orders of magnitude. Also, the time it takes us to deploy services to a new region has been cut by more than 90%. It used to take us at least six months to get a new region online, and now we can get a region up and running in less than three weeks. On AWS, we can even replicate data at the bucket level across regions for disaster recovery purposes.

To cut costs, we were successfully able to divide our storage infrastructure into frequently and infrequently accessed data. Tiered storage in Amazon S3 has been a huge advantage, allowing us to optimize our storage costs so we have more to invest in product development. We can now move data from inactive to active tiers instantly to meet customer needs and eliminated the need to overprovision our storage infrastructure. It is refreshing to see services automatically scale up or down during peak load times, and know that we are only paying for what we need.

Overall, we achieved our key strategic goal of focusing more on development and less on infrastructure. Our migration felt seamless, and the progress we were able to share is a true testament to how easy it has been for us to run our workloads on AWS. We attribute part of our successful migration to the dedicated support provided by the AWS team. They were pretty awesome. We had a couple of their technicians available 24/7 via chat, which proved to be essential during this large-scale migration.

-Shiva Paranandi, SVP of Technology at Hightail

Learning More

Learn more about cost-effective tiered data storage with Amazon S3, or dive deeper into our AWS Partner Ecosystem to see which solutions could best serve the needs of your company.

The Heart of Maker Faire

Post Syndicated from Janina Ander original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/heart-maker-faire/

We at the Raspberry Pi Foundation find it incredibly rewarding to help people make and share things they love. It’s amazing to be part of an incredibly creative community of makers. And we’re not the only ones who feel this way: for this year’s Maker Faire UK, the team over at NUSTEM created the Heart of Maker Faire, a Pi-powered art installation that is a symbol of this unique community. And to be perfectly frank, it’s bloody gorgeous.

The Heart of Maker Faire

NUSTEM’s new installation for Maker Faire UK 2017, held on 1st & 2nd April at the Centre for Life, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Visitors wrote notes about things they love, and sealed them in jars. They then read their heart rates, and used the control boxes to associate their jar and heart rate with a space on the shelves.

A heart for the community

NUSTEM is a STEM outreach organisation from Northumbria University, and the makers there are always keen to build interactive projects that get people excited about technology. So at this year’s Faire, attendees passing their installation were invited to write down something close to their heart, put that note in a jar, and measure their heart rate. Then they could connect their heart rate, via a QR code, to a space on a shelf lined with LEDs. Once they placed the jar in their space, the LEDs started blinking to imitate their heart beat. With this art piece, the NUSTEM team wants to say something about “how we’re all individuals, but about our similarities too”.

NUSTEM on Twitter

Still beating. Heart of #MakerFaireUK

Making the heart beat

This is no small build – it uses more than 2,000 NeoPixel LEDs, as well as five Raspberry Pis, among other components. Two Pi 3s are in charge of registering people’s contributions and keeping track of their jars. A Pi Zero W acts as a central hub, connecting its bigger siblings via WiFi, and storing a MySQL database of the jars’ data. Finally, two more Pi 3s control the LEDs of the Heart via a script written in Processing. The NUSTEM team has made the code available here for you “to laugh at” (their words, not mine!)

Heart of Maker Faire shelf

The heart, ready to be filled with love

A heart for art

Processing is an open-source programming language used to create images, graphs, and animations. It can respond to keyboard and mouse input, so you can write games with it as well. Moreover, it runs on the Pi, and you can use it to talk to the Pi’s GPIO pins, as the Heart of Maker Faire team did. Hook up buttons, sensors, and LEDs, and get ready to create amazing interactive pieces of art! If you’d like to learn more, read Matt’s blog post, or watch the talk he gave about Processing at our fifth birthday party earlier this year.

Matt Richardson: Art with Processing on the Raspberry Pi – Raspberry Pi Birthday Event 2017 – Talks

Matt Richardson: Art with Processing on the Raspberry Pi Sunday 5th March 2017 Raspberry Pi Birthday Event 2017 Filmed and edited by David and Andrew Ferguson. This video is not an official video published by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. No copyright infringement intended.

To help you get started, we’re providing a free learning resource introducing you to the basics of Processing. We’d love to see what you create, so do share a link to your masterworks in the comments!

World Maker Faire

We’ll be attending World Maker Faire in New York on the 23rd and 24th of September. Will you be there?

The post The Heart of Maker Faire appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Taking the first step on the journey

Post Syndicated from Matt Richardson original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/taking-first-step-journey/

This column is from The MagPi issue 58. You can download a PDF of the full issue for free, or subscribe to receive the print edition in your mailbox or the digital edition on your tablet. All proceeds from the print and digital editions help the Raspberry Pi Foundation achieve its charitable goals.

About five years ago was the first time I unboxed a Raspberry Pi. I hooked it up to our living room television and made space on the TV stand for an old USB keyboard and mouse. Watching the $35 computer boot up for the first time impressed me, and I had a feeling it was a big deal, but I’ll admit that I had no idea how much of a phenomenon Raspberry Pi would become. I had no idea how large the community would grow. I had no idea how much my life would be changed from that moment on. And it all started with a simple first step: booting it up.

Matt Richardson on Twitter

Finally a few minutes to experiment with @Raspberry_Pi! So far, I’m rather impressed!

The key to the success of Raspberry Pi as a computer – and, in turn, a community and a charitable foundation – is that there’s a low barrier to the first step you take with it. The low price is a big reason for that. Whether or not to try Raspberry Pi is not a difficult decision. Since it’s so affordable, you can just give it a go, and see how you get along.

The pressure is off

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system kernel, talked about this in a BBC News interview in 2012. He explained that a lot of people might take the first step with Raspberry Pi, but not everyone will carry on with it. But getting more people to take that first step of turning it on means there are more people who potentially will be impacted by the technology. Torvalds said:

I find things like Raspberry Pi to be an important thing: trying to make it possible for a wider group of people to tinker with computers. And making the computers cheap enough that you really can not only afford the hardware at a big scale, but perhaps more important, also afford failure.

In other words, if things don’t work out with you and your Raspberry Pi, it’s not a big deal, since it’s such an affordable computer.

In this together

Of course, we hope that more and more people who boot up a Raspberry Pi for the first time will decide to continue experimenting, creating, and learning with it. Thanks to improvements to the hardware, the Raspbian operating system, and free software packages, it’s constantly becoming easier to do many amazing things with this little computer. And our continually growing community means you’re not alone on this journey. These improvements and growth over the past few years hopefully encourage more people who boot up Raspberry Pis to keep exploring.
raspberry pi first step

The first step

However, the important thing is that people are given the opportunity to take that first step, especially young people. Young learners are at a critical age, and something like the Raspberry Pi can have an enormously positive impact on the rest of their lives. It’s a major reason why our free resources are aimed at young learners. It’s also why we train educators all over the world for free. And encouraging youngsters to take their first step with Raspberry Pi could not only make a positive difference in their lives, but also in society at large.

With the affordable computational power, excellent software, supportive community, and free resources, you’re given everything you need to make a big impact in the world when you boot up a Raspberry Pi for the first time. That moment could be step one of ten, or one of ten thousand, but it’s up to you to take that first step.

Now you!

Learning and making things with the Pi is incredibly easy, and we’ve created numerous resources and tutorials to help you along. First of all, check out our hardware guide to make sure you’re all set up. Next, you can try out Scratch and Python, our favourite programming languages. Feeling creative? Learn to code music with Sonic Pi, or make visual art with Processing. Ready to control the real world with your Pi? Create a reaction game, or an LED adornment for your clothing. Maybe you’d like to do some science with the help of our Sense HAT, or become a film maker with our camera?

You can do all this with the Raspberry Pi, and so much more. The possibilities are as limitless as your imagination. So where do you want to start?

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NYC Train Sign: real-time train tracking in New York City

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/nyc-train-sign/

Raspberry Pis, blinking lights, and APIs – what’s not to love? It’s really not surprising that the NYC Train Sign caught our attention – and it doesn’t hurt that its creators’ Instagram game is 👌 on point.

NYC Train Sign

NYC Train Sign. 158 likes · 2 talking about this. Live MTA train wait times signage.

Another transport sign?

Yes, yes, I know. Janina wrote about a bus timetable display only the other day. But hear me out, I have a totally legitimate reason why we’re covering this project as well…

…it’s just a really pretty-looking build, alright?

Public transport: a brief explanation

If you’ve been to New York City, or indeed have visited any busy metropolis, you’ll probably have braved the dread conveyor belt of empty-eyed masses that is…dundunduuun…public transport. Whenever you use it, unless you manage to hit that off-peak sweet spot (somewhere between 14.30 and 14.34) where the flow of human traffic is minimal, you are exposed to a hellish amalgam of rushing bodies, yells to ‘hold the door’, and the general funk of tight-packed public situations. Delicious.

NYC Train Sign Raspberry Pi

To be fair, Kramer has bad train etiquette

As APIs for public transport websites are becoming increasingly common and user-friendly, we’re seeing a rise in the number of transport-related builds. From Dr Lucy Rogers’ #WhereIsMyBus 3D-printed London icon to the VästtraPi bus departure screen mentioned above, projects using these APIs allow us respite from the throng and save us from waiting for delayed buses at drab and dreary stations.

Lucy Rogers WhereIsMyBus Raspberry Pi

image c/o Dr Lucy Rogers

We’ve seen a lot of bus builds, but have we seen train builds yet? Anyone? I’ll check: ‘Train your rat’, ‘Picademy teacher training’, ‘How to train your…’ Nope, I think this is the first. Maybe I’m wrong though, in which case please let me know in the comments.

NYC Train Sign

Let me see if I can get this right: the NYC Train Sign-building team at NYC Train Sign has created a real-time NYC train sign using a Raspberry Pi, LED matrix, and locally 3D-printed parts at their base in Brooklyn, NYC (…train sign – shoot!)

NYC Train Sign Raspberry Pi

The NYC Train Sign…so so pretty

The team, headed by creator Timothy Wu, uses the official NTA server API to fetch real-time arrival, departure, and delay information to display on their signs. They also handcraft the signs to fit your specifications (click here to buy your own). How very artisanal!

Do the BART(man)

As a result of the success of the NYC Train Sign, the team is now experimenting with signs for other transport services, including the San Francisco BART, Chicago CTA, and Boston MBTA. APIs are also available for services in other cities around the world, for example London and Los Angeles. We could probably do with a display like this in our London office! In fact, if you commute on public transport and can find the right API, I think one of these devices would be perfect for your workplace no matter where it is.

Using APIs

Given our free resources for a Tweeting Babbage and a…location marker poo (?!), it’s clear that at the Raspberry Pi Foundation we’re huge fans of using APIs in digital making projects. Therefore, it’s really no surprise that we like sharing them as well! So if you’ve created a project using an API, we’d love to see it. Pop a link into the comments below, or tag us on social media.

Now back to their Instagram game

Honestly, their photos are so aesthetically pleasing that I’m becoming a little jealous.

making of real-time nyc mta signs with raspberry pi in bushwick . as seen @kcbcbeer @fathersbk @houdinikitchenlab @dreammachinecreative @hihellobk . 3d-printing @3dbrooklyn vectors @virilemonarch . . #nyc #mta #subwaysystem #nycsubway #subway #metro #nycsubway #train #subwaysigns #3dprinting #3dmodel #3dprinter #3dprinting #3dprints #3d #newyorkcity #manhattan #brooklyn #bushwick #bronx #raspberrypi #code #javascript #php #sql #python #subwayart #subwaygraffiti

121 Likes, 4 Comments – @nyctrainsign on Instagram: “making of real-time nyc mta signs with raspberry pi in bushwick . as seen @kcbcbeer @fathersbk…”

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