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Chris — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:26:28 +0000

BitTorrent Tracker Mininova Goes Legal-Onl

Chris — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:18:56 +0000

Mininova, one of the web's go-to aggregators for BitTorrent trackers, hasdeleted nearly every torrent on its site in response to a court order. Only torrents uploaded by approved partners in its legal distribution network survived the cull and will continue to be allowed. There are, of course, plenty of alternatives for torrent fans, and technologies for a steadier BitTorrent future, but excuse us if we feel a tad bit nostalgic over the quieting of a brand name in torrent distribution. [TorrentFreak and BBC News]

Amazon Offers Three FREE MP3s of Your Choosing

Chris — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:32:15 +0000

Amazon is running a brief promotion (ends November 30th) offering $3 worth of MP3s from Amazon MP3 for free. Just head to this page , follow the directions, and enjoy your free credit. Jason mentioned this in today’s deals of the day , but we all know how important music can be to getting work done , so take advantage. [Amazon via UneasySilence ]

BitTorrent’s Future: DHT, PEX, and Magnet Links Explained

Chris — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:30:08 +0000

Last week The Pirate Bay confirmed it would shut down its tracker permanently, instead encouraging the use of DHT, PEX, and magnet links. This move confounded many BitTorrent enthusiasts, who were confronted with confusing new terminology and technology. Time for some explaining.

The Pirate Bay’s recent confirmation that they had closed down their tracker since DHT and Peer Exchange have matured enough to take over, was coupled with the news that they had added Magnet links to the site. This news has achieved its aim of stimulating discussion, but has also revealed that there is much confusion over how these technologies work.

The key thing to understand is that nobody is being forced to use Magnet links or trackerless torrents. While these long-standing technologies may prove to be the future, they will co-exist with tracker-enabled torrenting for quite some time. For now, nobody will be forced to immediately change their existing downloading habits, although it may be wise to switch to a BitTorrent client that is compatible with these technologies.

In an attempt to clear some of the mystique surrounding DHT, PEX and Magnet links we will walk through all three briefly, hoping to assure those who’ve become confused earlier this week.

DHT and PEX in action

DHT

Using DHT instead of trackers is one of the things The Pirate Bay is now trying to encourage, and torrent downloads that rely solely on this technology are often referred to as “trackerless torrents. ” DHT is used to find the IP addresses of peers, mostly in addition to a tracker. It is enabled by default in clients such as uTorrent and Vuze and millions of people are already using it without knowing.

DHT’s function is to find peers who are downloading the same files, but without communicating with a central BitTorrent tracker such as that previously operated by The Pirate Bay.

DHT is by no means a new technology. A version debuted in the BitTorrent client Azureus in May 2005 and an alternative but incompatible version was added to Mainline BitTorrent a month later. There is, however, a plugin available for Azureus Vuze which allows it access to the Mainline DHT network used by uTorrent and other clients.

Peer Exchange (“PEX”)

Peer Exchange is yet another means of finding IP addresses. Rather than acting like a tracker, it leverages the knowledge of peers you are connected to, by asking them in turn for the addresses of peers they are connected to. Although it requires a “kick start”, PEX will often uncover more genuine peers than DHT or a tracker.

Magnet links

Traditionally, .torrent files are downloaded from torrent sites. A torrent client then calculates a torrent hash (a kind of fingerprint) based on the files it relates to, and seeks the addresses of peers from a tracker (or the DHT network) before connecting to those peers and downloading the desired content.

Sites can save on bandwidth by calculating torrent hashes themselves and allowing them to be downloaded instead of .torrent files. Given the torrent hash — passed as a parameter within a Magnet link — clients immediately seek the addresses of peers and connect to them to download first the torrent file, and then the desired content.

It is worth noting that BitTorrent can not ditch the .torrent format entirely and rely solely on Magnet links. The .torrent files hold crucial information that is needed to start the downloading process, and this information has to be available in the swarm.

Pirate Bay links cf. Mininova links: When the Magnet link specification first came out, in January last year it called for a particular format (“base32 encoded”). The links that EZTV, Mininova and ShareReactor have displayed for some time all conform to that original specification. In May of last year the specification was changed, in favor of “hex encoding”, and that is the format of the links being displayed by The Pirate Bay. Torrent clients should accept either format.

Compatible Clients

All the main torrent clients: uTorrent 1.8.5, Vuze 4.3.0.2, BitTorrent 6.3, BitComet 1.16, and Transmission 1.76 (and others) support Peer Exchange and DHT (via a plugin in the case of Vuze). Neither BitComet nor Transmission yet support Magnet links but Transmission is planning to include Magnet link support in the upcoming 1.8 release. Bearing in mind that no site, including The Pirate Bay, has yet abandoned support for traditional torrent files, there is plenty of time for support to be added.

We hope that this article has cleared some of the smoke that was generated by The Pirate Bay’s announcements earlier this week. There is no need to panic, cry or be angry, and it’s not a problem if you’re still confused after reading this article. Torrents will still be available and aside from some extra downloading options thanks to sites that add Magnet links, nothing drastic will change in the near future.

Try Google New Search Interface

Chris — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:28:31 +0000

Google has, according to some Gizmodo readers, begun offering up a bolder but more condensed view of its home and search results pages to certain users. Take a full-size look, and try it out for yourself with some JavaScript magic.

Our own tips box isn’t lit up with readers seeing this new, more Google-Wave-like interface, but Gizmodo reader Matt Karolian sent over these pics that look a little bit too polished and thought out to be a reader joke (we’d hope/think). Most notable is the permanent sidebar being shown, which breaks searches down into “News,” “Maps,” “Everything,” and the more familiar drop-down “More” options.

Update: Google Blogoscoped already has a JavaScript tweak that gets anyone into Google’s new look test. Head to Blogoscoped, copy the code, paste it into your address bar, and refresh Google’s page. You may, like Phillip (and I), have to sign out and back in to get it to work, but it did eventually show up for me.

What do you think of Google’s maybe-new look? Could the search giant use a new coat of paint after all these years?

Lifehacker’s Guide to Making the Most of Black Friday

Chris — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:20:28 +0000

Black Friday: It’s a day when you can either score killer deals on gear or pay way too much for too little. The amount of planning and strategy you use is the biggest factor in whether or not you’ll get burned.

Photo by mecredis .

Black Friday marks the traditional point in the year when retailers stop operating at a loss (in the red) and start turning a profit (in the black), and they manage to accelerate that shift by separating lots of people from their money with Thanksgiving sales. If you plan well, this separation can result in a fantastic deal for you. If you plan poorly, it’ll result in not only a lack of a good deal but a day wasted out in the cold.

The following tips, tricks, and resources can help you avoid wasting a perfectly good day off and ensure you get what you’re looking for at the price you want.

Is It Worth Your Time?

Before you even begin to contemplate running the Black Friday gauntlet, you need to ask yourself how much your time is worth. If you’re throwing a wrench into plans to spend time with friends and family to save a couple hundred bucks on a laptop that isn’t all that great to begin with–and the store only has 5 in stock–it’s likely worth more just to enjoy your time with family and keep an eye on our Dealhacker posts here at Lifehacker . We pore over hundreds of deals a week and can say with authority that Black Friday-like deals happen all year long thanks to the magic of the internet.

The best way to decide if it is indeed worth your time is to take the next tip to heart.

Check Product Reviews and PricesBeforehand

Don’t fall into the trap of buying something just because it’s such a great deal. A $250 laptop that doesn’t do half the stuff you really want it to do is not a bargain compared to a $500 laptop that does. Research relentlessly, take the stack of advertisements and your list of Black Friday sites, and get information about the purchases you want to make. Reading reviews by fellow consumers and consumer-friendly publications is invaluable. You want to buy a super awesome and cheap GPS-EleventyBillion+1 unit? Hit some of these sites to make sure it’s not crap and that the price is right:

If you find reviews on both Amazon and Newegg from hundreds of customers talking about how bad the signal reception is on the GPS-EleventyBillion+1, you’ll know it’s not worth waiting in line for–even if it is dirt cheap. If you have a cellphone you can browse the web on, now would be a great time to bookmark the mobile versions–when available–of the sites above. When you’re in the Black Friday trenches, you can pull out your cellphone and check the ratings and prices right in the store.

Check Online Availability

More and more retailers are trying to grab a slice of the online market while more and more consumers are opting not to brave Black Friday for deals. This works strongly in your favor. Check out sites focused on deal hunting likeFatWallet , SlickDeals , and Black Friday-focused sites like BlackFriday.info ,BlackFriday Ads , and TgiBlackFriday . Not only will you get info about regular in-store Black Friday deals, but you’ll find out about online deals. We don’t know about you, but staying up until midnight on Thursday night to score a few good deals online and then going to bed is way better than sitting on a sidewalk outside of Best Buy only to find out that you weren’t early enough for the good stuff. Photo by mborowick .

Read The Fine Print

Not reading the fine print is a sure fire way to get burned on Black Friday. Whether you’re looking at the fine print on the bottom of a newspaper circular or a web site, you need to check it closely on Black Friday deals. What time does the store open on Black Friday? Are some or all of the deals time sensitive? Often stores will run deals like 15% off all electronics until 10AM or some such variation. How many of the deep-sale and door-buster items will they have in stock? How do they handle door buster items? You don’t want to go to a store where people have to stampede to get to the good items; you do want to go to a store that hands out door tickets to the early shoppers so nobody gets hurt trying to scramble for the good items.

Get There Early

How early? Real early. You think you’re a serious Black Friday shopper, but you’re not. Not by a long shot. Some people have been planning for Black Friday all year. They read deal sites like you read the news, make spreadsheets to compare prices over the year to Black Friday and argue with other deal hounds about the ethics of bribing your relatives to help get extra loot or just how evil it is to hide merchandise in washing machine at Sears.

You’re not going to just stroll into the line at 7AM to get that $2,000 HDTV marked down to $999–you’ll be standing behind deal hunters who have been camped out since the day before. You’ll need to scope out your local stores on Thanksgiving day to see just how crazy the line build up is. Again, referring to the first tip in our list: How much is it worth to you? A grand off a high-end television might, for some, be worth spending the night huddled outside a Sears. Wear layers, bring something warm to drink, and be courteous to the people in line with you. Aside from just being an upstanding person, being courteous can pay off when someone holds your spot when you have to use the bathroom or offers to buy an additional item for you when there is a one-per-customer limit.

Pi (1998) : Eureka!!

Chris — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:08:56 +0000

Pi (1998) : Eureka!!

Chris — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:56:38 +0000

Posted via web from crpost

Pi (1998)

Chris — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:55:21 +0000

The iPhone Already Has Multitasking, And It’s Awesome

Chris — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:56:24 +0000

In 2009, iPhone multitasking is a bit like apps were in the early jailbreak days. That is to say painfully, clearly possible, but simply not allowed. These jailbreak apps show how it could–and should–be done.

What you’re seeing here is really the combination of two apps, standby jailbreak justifier and essential iPhone appBackgrounder, which lets your designate any app to run in the background, and new task switcher interface called Multifl0w. (There are other, more basic task switchers already, the most widespread being Kirikae) The new combo feels like magic: It’s a little bit Android, a lotta bit Pre, and more importantly, an obvious improvement, at least on the speedier 3GS.

Granted, anyone who’s used background knows that for the sake of your battery, you have to be careful how many apps you open, and how many you leave running. Honestly though? Every other smartphone manufacturer trusts their users to mind their own damn processes , which seems to work out pretty well. So, uh, when will we get this by default? OS 4.0? 5.0? Shut up, blogger?

You can give it a try now in jailbreak app manager Rock, and Cydia’s on its way. Sadly, it’s only free on a trial basis, after which it’ll cost your five dollars. Backgrounder and Kirikae, though? They’re still free, in all sense of the word. [MultiFl0w - -Thanks, William! ]