There’s being into video gaming and there’s identifying as a hardcore gamer. Both are fine! But the latter group has developed a well-earned reputation for being rife with bigoted jerks, from the whole mess over Gamergate to more recent instances like PewDiePie’s repeated instances of racism. It’s also not a…
Source: Gizmodo – Does Razer Know It Posted a Racist Meme?
Songwriters just claimed a major victory in the fight for better pay from streaming giants like Apple and Spotify. The US Copyright Royalty Board has ruled for an increase in songwriter rates that will give them a 43.8 percent pay raise over the nex…
Source: Engadget – Streaming services must give songwriters a 44 percent pay hike
jwhyche, Slashdot reader #6,192, writes:
If you bought some illegal narcotics off Silk Road or even gave money to Wikileaks. Researchers at Qatar University and Hamad Bin Khalifa University have been able to link these transactions with real world identities. They have been able to do this even if the transactions are years old. Their research shows how easy it is to link accounts to these transactions without using any of the tools available to law enforcement like search warrants or subpoenas.
The researchers started with 88 unique bitcoin addresses from Tor hidden services, and then searched 5 billion tweets and 1 million pages on the Bitcoin Talk forum — ultimately linking 125 unique users to 20 Tor hidden services. “Bitcoin addresses should always be considered exploitable,” the researchers conclude, “as they can be used to deanonymize users retroactively.”
Their paper is titled “When a Small Leak Sinks a Great Ship: Deanonymizing Tor Hidden Service Users Through Bitcoin Transactions Analysis,” and Wired summarizes one of their conclusions. “Even deleting profile information that includes bitcoin addresses may not be enough if a post has been cached or captured by services like the Internet Archive, they point out. ‘If you’re vulnerable now, you’re vulnerable in the future.'”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Deanonymizing Tor: Your Bitcoin Transactions May Come Back To Haunt You
Saudi Arabia has released almost a hundred people detained on corruption allegations, and one of them is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The billionaire prince known as the “Arabian Warren Buffet” is one of the tech’s biggest investors and known for havin…
Source: Engadget – Saudi Arabia releases major tech investor after corruption probe
An anonymous reader quotes The Hill:
Uber’s chief executive is calling for Washington state to develop a “portable benefits system” to give contract workers in the so-called gig economy access to health care and retirement planning accounts. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi signed onto a letter with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 775 President David Rolf and Seattle investor and workers rights advocate Nick Hanauer urging the state to take action.
Uber does not hire drivers as actual employees meaning the company does not offer them benefits beyond compensation. Khosrowshahi said having the state change laws so that contract workers can carry benefits between jobs would be preferable to Uber hiring them as full employees.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Uber CEO Urges ‘Portable Benefits’ for Gig Economy Workers
Much the way emotions live inside every person, a script lives inside every movie, helping shape it, direct it, give it life. Scripts form a superstructure around which films are built. But the execution of a scene can diverge wildly from what’s in the script, for better and for worse.
Source: Gizmodo – Explore The Space Between Script and Screen With This Comparison From Inside Out
Two additional gamers have been named in a court case involving a Los Angeles man who allegedly phoned in a hoax emergency call over a Call of Duty friendly-fire dispute, resulting in a Wichita, Kansas police sniper shooting and killing an innocent man.
Source: Gizmodo – Two Additional Gamers Named in Fatal Kansas ‘Swatting’ Death
An anonymous reader quotes CSO:
“The strategy around Zero Trust boils down to don’t trust anyone. We’re talking about, ‘Let’s cut off all access until the network knows who you are. Don’t allow access to IP addresses, machines, etc. until you know who that user is and whether they’re authorized,'” says Charlie Gero, CTO of Enterprise and Advanced Projects Group at Akamai Technologies in Cambridge, Mass… The Zero Trust model of information security basically kicks to the curb the old castle-and-moat mentality that had organizations focused on defending their perimeters while assuming everything already inside didn’t pose a threat and therefore was cleared for access. Security and technology experts say the castle-and-moat approach isn’t working. They point to the fact that some of the most egregious data breaches happened because hackers, once they gained access inside corporate firewalls, were able move through internal systems without much resistance…
Experts say that today’s enterprise IT departments require a new way of thinking because, for the most part, the castle itself no longer exists in isolation as it once did. Companies don’t have corporate data centers serving a contained network of systems but instead today typically have some applications on-premises and some in the cloud with users — employees, partners, customers — accessing applications from a range of devices from multiple locations and even potentially from around the globe… The Zero Trust approach relies on various existing technologies and governance processes to accomplish its mission of securing the enterprise IT environment. It calls for enterprises to leverage micro-segmentation and granular perimeter enforcement based on users, their locations and other data to determine whether to trust a user, machine or application seeking access to a particular part of the enterprise… Zero Trust draws on technologies such as multifactor authentication, Identity and Access Management (IAM), orchestration, analytics, encryption, scoring and file system permissions. Zero Trust also calls for governance policies such as giving users the least amount of access they need to accomplish a specific task.
“Most organizational IT experts have been trained, unfortunately, to implicitly trust their environments,” says the chief product officer at an IAM/PIM solutions supplier.
“Everybody has been [taught] to think that the firewall is keeping the bad guys out. People need to adjust their mindset and understand that the bad actors are already in their environment.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Is It Time For Zero-Trust Corporate Networks?
When Microsoft killed its Band wearables, a leak emerged of what was believed to be the cancelled third-generation model. Well, it’s real — and it says a lot about what Microsoft was thinking before it pulled the plug. Windows Central has obtained…
Source: Engadget – Microsoft Band 3 prototype reveals the wearable that might have been
Despite getting thrashed by critics, Netflix’s first tentpole production, “Bright,” ended up being quite the hit: while it barely managed 26% on Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of the site’s audience rated it positively. The movie also drew over 11 million viewers, cementing a sequel. Netflix says this is proof that movie critics don’t matter as much anymore.
“Critics are an important part of the artistic process, but [they are] pretty disconnected from the commercial prospects of a film,” chief content officer Sarandos said. “[Film critics] speak to specific audiences who care about quality, or how objectively good or bad a movie is—not the masses who are critical for determining whether a film makes money.”
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Netflix Says “‘Bright” Success Proves Film Critics Are “Disconnected from Mass Appeal”
The New York Times has an expose on how celebrities, athletes, pundits, and politicians are buying fake followers for influence. Many accounts are derived from stolen profiles and sold by companies such as Devumi, which essentially profits from social media fraud. Twitter is being criticized for not proactively reviewing accounts for impersonation.
The actor John Leguizamo has Devumi followers. So do Michael Dell, the computer billionaire, and Ray Lewis, the football commentator and former Ravens linebacker. Kathy Ireland, the onetime swimsuit model who today presides over a half-billion-dollar licensing empire, has hundreds of thousands of fake Devumi followers, as does Akbar Gbajabiamila, the host of the show “American Ninja Warrior.” Even a Twitter board member, Martha Lane Fox, has some.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – The Follower Factory: Inside Social Media’s Black Market
Integral Memory has announced that it will be releasing a 512GB microSD card in February, the world’s first. The card features a peak transfer speed of 80MB/s and a minimum write speed of 10MB/s, being an SDXC UHS-I U1 card.
The card meets the Video Speed Class 10 (V10) standard, ensuring fast data transfer and making the capture of Full HD video on devices including digital cameras, action cams, drones and camcorders quicker and more reliable. Essentially, users can capture more stills and footage thanks to the huge 512GB capacity.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – UK’s Integral Memory First to Market with 512GB microSD Card
An anonymous reader quotes the Verge:
DuckDuckGo is launching updated versions of its browser extension and mobile app, with the promise of keeping internet users safe from snooping “beyond the search box.” The company’s flagship product, its privacy-focused search engine, will remain the same, but the revamped extension and app will offer new tools to help users keep their web-browsing as safe and private as possible. These include grade ratings for websites, factoring in their use of encryption and ad tracking networks, and offering summaries of their terms of service (with summaries provided by third-party Terms of Service Didn’t Read). The app and extension are available for Firefox, Safari, Chrome, iOS, and Android.
The ability to block ad tracking networks is probably the most important feature here. These networks are used by companies like Google and Facebook to follow users around the web, stitching together their browsing history to create a more accurate profile for targeted advertising.
DuckDuckGo calls it “a major step to simplify online privacy,” adding that without it, “It’s hard to use the Internet without it feeling a bit creepy — like there’s a nosey neighbor watching everything you do from across the street.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – DuckDuckGo App and Extension Upgrades Offer Privacy ‘Beyond the Search Box’
If you want a good barometer of how far Amazon Alexa has come, you just need to look at the company’s teaser for its Super Bowl LII ad. Where Amazon’s first-ever Super Bowl commercial was eager to sell you on the still-unproven Echo using as much st…
Source: Engadget – Amazon teases Alexa Super Bowl ad starring Jeff Bezos
Please brace yourself. According to a Saturday expose in the New York Times, some of your favorite social media influencers may not really be influencers at all.
Source: Gizmodo – Shocking Report Suggests Some Celebrities May Be Buying Social Media Followers
Released this weekend is Binutils 2.30 as the latest collection of these GNU utilities important to the open-source ecosystem…
Source: Phoronix – GNU Binutils 2.30 Released
Just earlier today, Malwarebytes pushed a “bad protection update” that led to high memory consumption and CPU usage, but the company already has a fix. Users who are having trouble installing it may first try terminating the mbamservice.exe process in task manager or reinstalling the software.
To resolve these issues simply start MBAM and check for new updates. The program will automatically download the new update and install it. If your computer is unresponsive, you can either terminate the mbamservice.exe process in task manager and restart Malwarebytes in order to try and download the new update. As a last resort, you can uninstall MBAM and reinstall it.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Malwarebytes Update Released to Fix High CPU and Memory Usage
We finally have an official launch date, and if all goes according to plan, Falcon Heavy will [hopefully] blast off from the LC-39A launchpad on February 6th, 2018. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed the exciting news earlier today via Twitter.
The first launch of Falcon Heavy has been in the works for years. SpaceX had originally hoped to get
Source: Hot Hardware – SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket Maiden Launch Set For February 6 With Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster Onboard
Cory Doctorow writes:
Millions of new cars sold in the US and Europe are “connected,” having some mechanism for exchanging data with their manufacturers after the cars are sold; these cars stream or batch-upload location data and other telemetry to their manufacturers, who argue that they are allowed to do virtually anything they want with this data, thanks to the “explicit consent” of the car owners — who signed a lengthy contract at purchase time that contained a vague and misleading clause deep in its fine-print.
Slashdot reader Luthair adds that “OnStar infamously has done this for some time, even if the vehicle’s owner was not a subscriber of their services.” But now 78 million cars have an embedded cyber connection, according to one report, with analysts predicting 98% of new cars will be “connected” by 2021. The Washington Post calls it “Big Brother on Wheels.”
“Carmakers have turned on a powerful spigot of precious personal data, often without owners’ knowledge, transforming the automobile from a machine that helps us travel to a sophisticated computer on wheels that offers even more access to our personal habits and behaviors than smartphones do.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Car Manufacturers Are Tracking Millions of Cars
You’ve got a fever, runny nose, and can’t get out of bed. It must be the flu, right? Not necessarily.
Source: LifeHacker – How to Tell the Difference Between a Cold and the Flu