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<\/p>\nWith The Pirate Bay\u00a0being resurrected this week, I wonder what rights holders must be thinking right now. So much effort, money used to take down a site that was only down for less than two months, and\u00a0piracy probably didn’t even drop during the downtime. The words ‘trying’, ‘stop’, ‘flood’ and ‘sponge’ comes to mind.<\/p>\n
Let’s get started with this week’s stories.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>It’s back! Maybe not the same as before, but just as “piratey”<\/p><\/div>\n
The Pirate Bay is back<\/a>. Or is it? The death and resurrection of the world’s most popular piracy website has been shrouded in a cloak of secrecy ever since the site went down in early December. The site is now fully back, and with content prior to the raid all being mostly restored, and so it seems like another victory for the pirates against authorities who have tried time and time again to bring down the notorious site.<\/p>\n Following\u00a0a mysterious raid, cryptic messages, hidden codes,\u00a0a countdown timer, you can forgive most users for being a bit wary of the whole situation. Conspiracy\u00a0theories, therefore, are rife now that TPB has also made some controversial changes following its restoration. Gone are admins and moderators, whom the operators of TPB says\u00a0are responsible for “severe security issues”. Users can now self-moderate by reporting fake and misleading torrents, which will get dealt with.\u00a0And with the site being so busy again, the use of an US based cloud hosting solution (one that is under US jurisdiction, and therefore, open to surveillance by the authorities) have led some to worry over the site’s privacy, although TPB says\u00a0the use of an US\u00a0service is, at this time, only a temporary measure to deal with the huge traffic flows.<\/p>\n The situation is made worse by the fact that, during the site’s hiatus, mirrors, some legit, many not, sprang up all trying to be the “new” Pirate Bay. With the resurrected site using the original domain names (the .se and .org ones), it seems fairly certain this newly returned site is the real deal. But\u00a0It looks like it will take some time for TPB to earn back the trust of its users.<\/p>\n You can now use your HBO Blu-ray discs to stream HBO content<\/a>. The “HBO Sampler” feature, which uses the BD Live feature on connected Blu-ray players, will allow owners\u00a0of selected HBO box sets to sample complete episodes of shows like ‘Girls’ and (at some time in the future) ‘True Detectives’. Because the content is streamed\u00a0via\u00a0the Internet, the sample episodes\u00a0available will also be updated, quarterly, to\u00a0promote different shows.<\/p>\n I guess it’s a lot better than being forced to watch\u00a0streaming\u00a0trailers without any way to skip them, which is what BD Live streaming has been most frequently used for so far.<\/p>\n Despite the Xbox One’s strong performance in November and December in the United States (it was the top selling console during these two\u00a0months, which are traditionally the best selling months of the year), the PS4, or rather\u00a0the PlayStation brand, outsold the Xbox brand<\/a> quite comfortably in\u00a0the fourth quarter, and in 2014 overall.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n