Russia Blocks 500 ‘Pirate’ Sites in Four Months, Without a Single Court Order
Once the legal process for blocking pirate sites has been accepted in a region, it usually follows that dozens if not hundreds of other sites are given the same treatment. Rightsholders simply point to earlier decisions and apply for new blockades under established law. Very quickly, however, it became clear that when a domain is blocked it’s relatively easy to produce a clone or ‘mirror’ of a site to achieve the...
EU Anti-Piracy Agreement Has Little Effect on Advertising, Research Finds
In recent years various copyright holder groups have adopted a “follow-the-money” approach in the hope of cutting off funding to so-called pirate sites. Thus far this has resulted in some notable developments. In the UK, hundreds of advertising agencies began banning pirate sites in 2014 and similar initiatives have popped up elsewhere too. One of the more prominent plans was orchestrated by the European Commission. In...
How to check spelling at the Linux command line with Aspell
Proper spelling doesn’t seem to be very important to many people these days. There are, however, those of us for whom it is. Yes, I am one of those people. While I’m not a spelling cop, misspelled words stick out when I encounter them. They hurt my eyes. They hurt my brain. Any good text editor or word processor packs a spelling checker. If you’re working in plain text, you can go another route to check spelling: at...
Block ads on your network with Raspberry Pi and pi-hole
Got an old Raspberry Pi lying around? Hate seeing ads while browsing the web? Pi-hole is an open source software project that blocks ads for all devices on your home network by routing all advertising servers into nowhere. What’s best is it takes just a few minutes to set up. read...
Assemble this game console in four hours
Retro game consoles that are easy to program are a great way to introduce anyone—and especially kids—to video game development. One of these is Gamebuino, a preassembled, handheld retro game console. It’s kind of an Arduino on steroids, with a Nokia 5110 mobile phone display (84×48 pixels), LiPo charger and LiPo battery, an SD card reader, and an SD card with a bunch of games. MAKERbuino, which is...
