KickassTorrents Team Prepares For “Happy Torrents Day” To Keep Tradition Alive

owever, this hasn’t dampened the spirit of the staff of KAT, as several KAT-crew members regrouped in an effort to get the community part of the site back up. They launched the Katcr.co forum as their new home and hinted that torrents could come back too, in the future. This turned out to be true when in December a new version of the site was launched, complete with the KAT look and feel. Several months have passed, and the new site is still running, and gaining traffic month after month.

Not only this, the KAT group also continues the site’s legacy at the new home, which is the traditional annual “Torrents Day” celebration.

For those unfamiliar, torrents day is a celebration of torrent started by Mr. Pink from KAT administrator in 2011. Torrent day celebrated annually every year on 30th march by KAT website were majority of uploaders upload their torrent on that day dedicated to torrent day. It began as a small celebration, but over the years it has turned into a recurring tradition with many thousands of people participating.

This year too, KAT is celebrating “Happy Torrents Day” for the sixth time in a row and are encouraging users to download and share as much as possible.The KAT staff has put together an overview of the various challenges and events. For example, users can add their favourite song to the official soundtrack, or participate in the upload challenge.

“Five years ago we realized that what our users do on KickAssTorrents, what they believe in and enjoy, needed celebrating. A day to give back to them what they give to us,” KAT administrator Mr. Black had told TorrentFreak last year.

“Every torrent community is different and individual in its own way but we all believe in freedom of sharing and of course share one of the most important things in common. Torrents.”

TorrentFreak caught with the team of KAT to see how things stand this year. TorrentFreak got in touch with one of the staff, Mr. Gooner, to ask what all the commotion is about the torrents day.

“Happy Torrents Day is to honor and celebrate the freedom and ability to share, to encourage users to share as much as possible on the day, whilst participating in various events within the community. We’ve known users to book time off work for the day and organize themselves well in advance,” Mr. Gooner says.

In spite of the tradition being kept alive, things will be a bit different this year. Even though the new site has millions of visitors a month, the traffic is nowhere close what it was. However, the most important part is that people can share again, freely, according to the team.

“Our milestones for Happy Torrents Day are simply to share as many torrents as possible, more every year and celebrate our freedom to do so,” Mr. Gooner notes.

Even though KAT.cr may look like a replica of the old site, there is still more work to be done behind the scenes to get it where the team wants it to be. It took years to develop the original site and the current staff is working hard to reach that level again.

The past months haven’t been without issues though. When the site first launched its torrent section, due to the massive attention, it was unreachable for days, and even today there are some additional setbacks. However, things are moving ahead.

“At the present moment, the site design and code is not where we want it, system timeouts and overloads are present at some stages but as we mentioned it’s a huge challenge to start from scratch again. We are working hard on it,” Mr. Gooner says.

KAT.cr doesn’t consider itself a KAT successor. They are KAT. While the technical part of the site was previously managed by a separate team, the same group of staffers, uploaders, and users is still on board.

At the old site, the same team that handles things today also managed the community too.

“We are not the KAT successor – we are KAT and always have been. Kickass Torrents was never run by the founder, it was always run by Team Kickass, our Super Users, Translators, uploaders and community members.

“Every thread, team member promotion and site feature was decided by the team. The site was and is still running under the same command of administration, moderation team, and rules,” Mr. Gooner adds.

It wasn’t easy to bring back a website whose alleged former owner and operators are caught up in a U.S. criminal investigation. However, the law enforcement has not yet targeted the new site till date.

Of course, there are the irregular legal takedown requests. The KAT team says it will fully abide by these, as long as they’re lawful.

“We’ve had some interesting demands such as supplying access to our database so that a particular agency can access and remove content directly from our site on their say-so. Obviously unreasonable requests won’t be entertained, however, genuine copyright requests are voluntarily actioned without delay,” Mr. Gooner says.

As for the future?

The KAT team plans to keep building the site and community, bettering it little by little. If the original founder returns they are happy to hand over the reins but for now, they plan to stay on their current course.

“Right now we are focusing on getting back to where we were. We fully support our founder and expect him to be released. If that happens quickly, we will go back to full site immediately.”

“If that takes time, we will continue to work hard, re-build the code and get KAT back to where we were. After that, we will just keep growing, sharing and fighting internet censorship. And the more they push us, the harder we’ll fight,” Mr. Gooner concludes.

Source:TorrentFreak

Samsung Compels Video of GTA Galaxy Note 7 Mod to Be Taken Down

Samsung has apparently issued a DMCA takedown focussing on a hilarious YouTube video of a Grand Theft Auto V mod, which provides the Note 7 explosive, grenade-like capabilities.

“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and its affiliates,” the video now reads.

HitmanNiko, the Mod’s creator, clearly created the in-game feature to imitate the unfortunate situation Samsung has found itself in.

For those unfamiliar, Samsung is in troubled waters for the past one month and a half after its brand new Galaxy Note 7 phones were recalled after their batteries started exploding. The Samsung Note 7 has proved a nightmare not only for the South Korean giant but also the loyal customers who purchased the device. Note 7’s debacle has become a laughing stock in the tech world.

So much so that a “Grand Theft Auto V” mod was made by an innovative player that turns sticky bombs into Galaxy Note 7s. It just re-skins an existing weapon in the game to look like a cell phone for the sake of a topical tech joke.

While Samsung has managed to remove the video from YouTube, here’s another version of the video uploaded by a different user.

What would happen to us if the Internet went down…?

The DDoS attack which brought down the Internet in much of United States of America and  parts of Europe left users without Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, Netflix and many other websites. The attack also left PlayStation Network users high and dry throughout the day. The DDos attack was fuelled by your and my common Internet of Things connected devices like smart camera, CCTVs, smart refrigerators etc.

For those out of the loop, on Friday morning, a distributed denial of service attack against DNS provider, Dyn brought down websites and apps across the internet, temporarily barring access to Twitter, Pinterest, WhatsApp, and more for millions of users. While Dyn was able to stabilize the situation within a few hours, a second DDoS attack began in the early afternoon, again disrupting services across the web.

Dyn provides domain name system services, translating common internet addresses into machine-legible information that ensures you get to where you’re trying to go on the web. So every request you make for a website has to go through a DNS server. Citing Flashpoint, a security intelligence firm, Forbes reports that the attackers appear to have used a Mirai botnet against Dyn.

Mirai botnets exploit Internet of Things devices, taking advantage of their low security to employ them in DDoS attacks. In late September, someone going by the handle Anna-senpai released Mirai’s source code, and since then, the DDoS attacks using Mirai botnets have increased.

The 1.2TB DDoS attack using such Internet of Things connected devices caused a complete breakdown of the Internet in the United States and parts of Europe. What would happen if the Internet to the entire world goes down? Such a scenario has been actually predicted by a security researcher, Bruce Schneier. In fact, Schneier says that some unknown entity is already working on bringing down the whole Internet. Schneier in an essay last month revealed that companies responsible for the basic infrastructure of the Internet are experiencing an escalating series of coordinated attacks that appear designed to test the defenses of its most critical elements. It seems likely that the attack against Dyn which brought down the Internet on 21st and 22nd October was a part of this grand scheme.

So what happens if Schneier is right and the Internet is actually shut down?  We look at the impact if such a situation arises in near future.

A situation like this brings  E.M. Forster’s disturbing tale ” The Machine Stops” to mind. Written in 1909, it describes the downfall of a civilization that is totally subservient to an automated life-support system. Foster’s novel has its citizens thinking of the Machine as an infallible deity and live in their individual mechanical wombs, communicating and doing business only through the Machine. They worship it in their fashion until in the words of the author:

There came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any previous hint of feebleness, the entire communication system broke down, all over the world, and the world, as they understood it, ended.

Though we have not yet arrived at such a situation where the Internet is a god but it leaves no doubt that our lives totally depend on the being online today. Here are some things that would happen if there was no Internet :

1. No Social Networking = No online friends.  When Internet connection goes off, the first casualties are social network websites like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat. As soon as this happens, users who normally contacted their friends and colleagues through social media try to contact with friends and family through telephone lines. Due to overload, telecommunication services go down. Due to non-availability of Internet, LTE networks go down leaving users at the mercy of landlines.

2. No Internet = No News/Information Without the Internet you wouldn’t be able to get round the clock information like news, or weather forecast. Air-traffic can’t function, high seas become dangerous. Metros come to a complete standstill. Suburban train networks will run slowly bringing big cities around the world to a creeping halt.

3. No Internet = No online banking/ATMs Online banking goes down. ATMs failures cause huge queues at banks. Banks face huge clearing pile up as the cheque clearing and money transfers have to be done manually.  This continues until the time there is a breakdown in services. There would be no PayPal or Visa purchases. Credit and Debit cards would become redundant as Point-of-Sales would not work. NYSE, FTSE, Nifty etc would stop trading in shares and stocks. WTI trades for Crude oil would stop as will Chicago Mercantile Exchange leading to stopping of commodities trade.

4. No Internet = No Satellites. The GPS network would completely breakdown as will the normal satellite communications. Everything which is connected to Satellites would have to be shut down.

The above some examples that come to mind easily. The Internet is much more than dominant in our life today than it was a decade ago. Also millions of IT workers who are dependent on the Internet would be out of work while big companies like Google/Facebook/Uber would shut down.

Seems like a grim scenario! Looks like Foster foresaw the situation in 1909 when he wrote ‘The Machine Stops’. Though there is a counterview to this. The internet is self-resilient.   It can’t simply be “shut down” – it’s not built that way.  Turning off the Internet is like shutting off religion. You just can’t do it.  Come to think of it… it’d be easier to turn off religion than to turn off the internet.

However, we seem to closer to making the Internet our god. Not in the abstract way but the Internet surely dominates our way of life with a god-like presence. Without the Internet we would surely be hurtled to stone age again as switching to manual way of doing things would be too difficult.

Time to remember that the Internet can’t just be turned off… but it can/could be stopped, of course.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM form a ‘Partnership on AI’

Five top-notch tech companies such as Google’s DeepMind, Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft have come together and created a new group called the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society. The main mission of this group is to promote public understanding of AI (artificial intelligence) while developing best products and services powered by machine learning. These companies will also discuss advancements and best practices for researchers to abide by.

The group notes that it “foresees great societal benefits and opportunities ahead, but we also understand that as with every new technology there will be concerns and confusion associated with new applications and competencies, and we look forward to working together on these important issues.

“We intend to come together to address these important issues, including ethics, safety, transparency, privacy, biases, and fairness.”

In a press release on Wednesday, the group stated: “The objective of the partnership on AI is to address opportunities and challenges with AI technologies to benefit people and society. Together, the organization’s members will conduct research, recommend best practices, and publish research under an open license in areas such as ethics, fairness and inclusivity; transparency, privacy, and interoperability; collaboration between people and AI systems; and the trustworthiness, reliability and robustness of the technology. It does not intend to lobby government or other policy making bodies.”

Initial financial help will come from these companies and as other stakeholders join the group, the finances are expected to increase.

“We want to involve people impacted by AI as well,” Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder and head of applied AI at DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet (parent company of Google), was quoted as saying.

According to the report, the organisation’s board members will include academics, representatives from other non-for-profit organisations, and specialists in policy and ethics. Also, the organisational structure has been designed to allow non-corporate groups to have equal leadership side-by-side with large tech companies.

“As researchers in industry, we take very seriously the trust people have in us to ensure advances are made with utmost consideration for human values,” director of AI Research at Facebook, Yann LeCun, who will be joining the board of the new organisation, said in a statement.

Ralf Herbrich, Amazon director of Machine Learning, who will be representing Amazon on the board, said: “We’re in a golden age of machine learning and AI. This partnership will ensure we’re including the best and the brightest in this space in the conversation to improve customer trust and benefit society.”

However, despite the initiative’s solid line-up, one can’t help but wonder as to why Apple is not in the list. Speaking to The Guardian, Microsoft’s Eric Horvitz, who serves as one of the project’s interim co-chairs, told that they’ve been in discussions with Cupertino. “I know they’re enthusiastic about this effort,” he said, “and I’d personally hope to see them join.”

Also, another missing name is Elon Musk’s OpenAI, a non-profit AI research project that promises to make its results available to all. Since the team plans to invite more companies and non-profits from around the world to be part of the effort, this may eventually change in the future.

Zebra launches world’s first-ever Android based wearable computer

After decades of Microsoft’s Windows-based wearable computers, the shopkeepers, warehouse owners and salesmen now have an option of using user-friendly Android based wearable computer. Zebra Technologies has introduced its first-ever Android-based enterprise wearable called WT600 Industrial Wearable Computer as well as an accessory RS6000 Wearable Ring Scanner and an HS3100 Rugged Headset that add flexibility for a wide range of enterprise users. The WT6000 runs on Android Lollipop 5.1, while the ring scanner and headset don’t include their own operating systems.

The WT600 comes with RS6000 Wearable Ring Scanner and an HS3100 Headset  to offer a complete solution to enterprise users.

The Zebra WT6000 Industrial Wearable Computer can be worn on a wrist and includes a 3.2-inch WVGA (800 by 480 pixels) LCD In-Plane-Switching touch-screen display, a scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass 3 cover, quad-core 1GHz processor, 1GB of memory, 4GB of flash storage and a 3,350mAh Li-Ion battery. The Android Lollipop 5.1 operating system on the device includes Zebra Mobility Extensions (Mx) to customize it for enterprise users.

WT6000 is 4.7 inches wide, 3.5 inches high and 0.7 inches thick and weighs 8.7 ounces. It includes three user-programmable function keys as well as WiFi, Bluetooth and near-field communications (NFC) connectivity. The device has several options for data capture, including a variety of 1D/2D imaging scanners. Zebra says that WT6000 is dustproof and spray-proof, and can be operated in extreme conditions.

The company has also released Zebra Mobility Extensions which will allow enterprise workers to use hands-free voice commands to pick orders. Prices for the WT3000 start at $3,000.

Google’s free 1GB Wi-Fi is being used to surf Pornhub at Patna railway station

No wonder India ranks third among porn surfing nations as of 2015. As per Pornhub report, India was third in the list of countries that brought maximum traffic to its website. The first was the US, second was the UK and third was India, which marked an improvement of one position for our country compared to the years 2014 when the third slot was occupied by Canada. Patna railway station tops the chart in terms of internet search using the free Wi-Fi service, though the maximum searches were for porn sites, a railway official said on Monday.

While we are at it, seems like Patna railway station is looking to top the chart as Pornhub capital of India. According to Indian railway officials, porn seems to on top of Indian’s minds as they surf with the free 1GB Wi-Fi provided by Google at Patna railway station.

Porn tops the search charts and Pornhub is the top website that Patna railway passengers are interested in, a railway official said on Monday.

“More than any other railway station in the country, where free Wi-Fi service was launched, the Patna railway station is on the top in the country for using internet search, particularly serach for porn sites,” stated an official of RailTel, a Indian government undertaking.

After Patna, Jaipur railway station is second to use internet search, followed by Bengaluru and New Delhi. “It was revealed from our records of use of data by users,” the official said.

Patna station was the first station in Bihar to be provided by Google’s 1GB  free Wi-Fi connectivity This railway station is one of the crowded ones with more than 200 trains passing through it daily.

According to RailTel officials, after Porn, the passengers used the free Wi-Fi for Youtube at Patna, followed by Wikipedia. “More than anything, porn sites have been watched and downloaded by the people at Patna railway station.”

Some people have been using free Wi-Fi to download apps, and Bollywood and Hollywood films also.  At present, RailTel is providing 1 gigabite Wi-Fi at the Patna railway station but planning to increase to 10 gigabites due to slow speed of internet in view of more use of it by the passengers as well as youths, who regularly spend hours to enjoy free internet.

To date free Wi-FI facility has been launched at 23 railway stations in the country. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said the government plans to introduce the service at all major railway stations in the country in the next three years.

“By this year-end, free Wi-Fi facility will be launched at 100 major railway stations. We will achieve our target of 400 stations in three years. Once in place, it will be the largest public Wi-Fi system in the world,” Prabhu said.

The service was commissioned by RailTel, in association with Google, for providing high-speed internet to rail commuters at these places.

 

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 830 processor will feature new X16 LTE modem to users surf at 1Gbps speeds

If your next smartphone features Qualcomm’s new 830 Snapdragon processor, you may be blazing down the Internet highway at 1Gbps speeds. A speed unheard for smartphones as of today would be a certain reality in 2017. Making the announcement at its 4G/5G Summit in Hong Kong, the Qualcomm stated that its upcoming Snapdragon 800 series processor which is likely to be called Snapdragon 830, will feature its X16 LTE modem, which will allow users to download files at speeds of up to 1 Gbps.

This means that Android smartphones could allow users 1Gbps data speeds from 2017-18 however, the corollary remains your carrier network has ability to support it. Since such ability exists only in 64 percent of carriers in the world and most of them from South Korea, Japan, and Scandinavia, users from other countries shouldn’t get too excited about the news.

There’s also the question of data caps, as there’s no point having superfast speeds if all it busts the data cap in a single day.

Qualcomm refused to reveal when the Snapdragon 830 will be available for smartphones. The chipmaker usually releases a new flagship processor every year, it’s likely we can expect to see something in 2017.

Qualcomm-powered 5G devices may arrive in first half of 2018

The company announced its very first 5G modem, the Snapdragon X50, which will support download speeds at up to 5 Gbps in the 5G arena. X50-powered devices “are expected to be available during the first half of 2018.”

Qualcomm said that X50-powered devices “are expected to be available during the first half of 2018.” Do remember that 5G standard for smartphones is supposed to arrive at the same time. Qualcomm’s X50 modem is designed for early 5G deployments and we can see the 5Gbps speed gradually increase substantially.

X50 modem will deliver whopping 5 Gbps download speed 800 MHz bandwidth in the mmWave spectrum. Though the mmWave frequency has limited penetration range, Qualcomm’s X50 modem will make use of MIMO antenna technology with intelligent beam forming and beam tracking to bounce signals off walls, in order to go around obstacles. It’ll be years before we go fully 5G so early deployments will likely have limited coverage, but don’t worry, as the X50 can seamlessly switch between 5G and Gigabit LTE, so long as it’s paired with a Snapdragon processor with an integrated Gigabit LTE modem — like the X16 announced earlier this year. Such a boost in connection speeds will let us look forward to new use cases in the mobile world — real-time augmented reality plus virtual reality, super.

With 5G standard slated to arrive in first half of 2018, it will years before we have 5G standards world over. Looks like 2017-18 is going to be a great year for mobile telephony!