Court orders Pirate Bay blockade, users defeat it within minutes

Hmmm....

Ever since the Pirate Bay, the online repository of free (and not always legal) movies, music, games, and other media, sprung back to life two months ago, things have been running pretty much as normal. But the popular torrent site still faces varying challenges on a regular basis, including one in Sweden, where an ISP has refused to block the site and is heading to trial to October.

At issue, as always, is whether ISPs are responsible for the traffic that goes across their lines; media companies like Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music, and various movie and television distributors say yes, while ISPs often say no.

“It is an important principle that Internet providers of Internet infrastructure shall not be held responsible for the content that is transported over the Internet. In the same way that the Post should not meddle in what people write in the letter or where people send letters,” Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget commercial director Mats Lundquist said in a statement earlier this month. “We stick to our starting point that our customers have the right to freely communicate and share information over the Internet.”

HTC One E9+ unveiled with confusing spec line up

Just how good is it?

The HTC One E9+ is official, as a full product page for the handset has appeared on the Taiwanese firm's Chinese website, but there is some confusion over what's on offer here.

You'll find a 5.5-inch display on the One E9+, but while the spec sheet quotes a full HD resolution, scroll down the page and HTC is boasting about a QHD, 534ppi screen.

ISS astronauts to test new eye protection for future Mars missions

There are probably people alive on Earth today who will, at some point, set foot on Mars. As the possibility of a manned mission to the Red Planet becomes more plausible, we have to confront all the little things that can go wrong on the long journey there and back. For example, what if the astronauts we send to Mars can’t see anything when they get there? That would be a pretty big problem.

We’ve learned about a number of negative effects from being in a weightless environment for extended periods of time. For example, astronauts on the International Space Station need to exercise every day to maintain muscle mass and bone density that would otherwise decrease rapidly. It’s simple to just exercise that problem away, but the detrimental effects on human eyesight in space are more vexing.

Vuze speeds up torrent downloads with swarm merging

this changes things

Virtually every torrent client on the Internet operates in the same fashion, but Azureus Software is trying something a little different with the popular Vuze app. In the newest v5.6 build of Vuze, users have the option to merge two swarms sharing the same file in order to boost the overall speed of a download. Is the era of the unified swarm at hand?

Torrent clients come in all shapes and sizes — some offer loads of features and others are simply a UI for monitoring downloads. Vuze leans toward the former with support for RSS subscriptions, Web control, torrent search, video playback, and device conversion/sync. It tries to do it all, which not everyone is a fan of, but the new swarm merging feature might have you taking a second look at Vuze.

Sony’s firmware 2.50 will finally bring suspend and resume to the PS4

Here we go

Finally, suspend and resume is headed for the PS4. Sony officially confirmed that the long-awaited feature is coming in the next major firmware revision. Other convenience and performance tweaks will be added to firmware 2.50 (dubbed “Yukimura”) as well, so PS4 users will have an even better gaming experience going forward.

Inside EquationDrug: The world’s premier, NSA-backed espionage platform

Inside...

Ever since Edward Snowden exposed the NSA’s shadowy operations and vast web of intelligence gathering, there’s been an unanswered question lurking in the background — where are the groups that build and maintain the NSA’s various software tools? Kaspersky Labs thinks it’s found at least one of them and uncovered the spycraft suite that the NSA-backed team uses to do its dirty work.