Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 22/7/2015: Kodi 15.0, MKVToolnix 8.2.0





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • 6 Things You Learn Preserving America's Past
    The sheer volume of paper out there means that there's simply no way that archivists have been able to go through everything. Some boxes haven't been opened since the 1800s, and we may never have any idea what these things are. See, archivists need permission to go through material like that. To do so, you need to tell the higher-ups specifically where you want to look and what you're looking for. You can't simply start randomly spelunking in piles of government papers -- the files will get messed up even worse than they are now. Somewhere in our records are papers that could change what we know about the history of our country. Every archivist knows this. But we need to get through everything first, and with mundane governmental papers taking priority (looking at you, Veterans Affairs), archivists rarely get the chance to discover new things.


  • Science



    • Studies find genetic signature of native Australians in the Americas
      The exact process by which humanity introduced itself to the Americas has always been controversial. While there's general agreement on the most important migration—across the Bering land bridge at the end of the last ice age—there's a lot of arguing over the details. Now, two new papers clarify some of the bigger picture but also introduce a new wrinkle: there's DNA from the distant Pacific floating around in the genomes of Native Americans. And the two groups disagree about how it got there.




  • Security



    • Security updates for Monday


    • Why DANE isn't going to win
      1024 bit RSA keys are quite common throughout the DNSSEC system. Getting rid of 1024 bit keys in the PKI has been a long-running effort; doing the same for DNSSEC is likely to take quite a while. Yes, rapid rotation is possible, by splitting key-signing and zone-signing (a good design choice), but since it can’t be enforced, it’s entirely likely that long-lived 1024 bit keys for signing DNSSEC zones is the rule, rather than exception.


    • RealVNC: more open remote access protocols will increase security
      Yes but RFB 5 is new... and it's a closed, secret, previously unpublished protocol (unlike earlier RFB 3.x versions).

      Hmm, still doesn't sound very secure.

      Security in remote access solutions will always be a concern for some it's true.


    • I worked at #HackingTeam, my emails were leaked to WikiLeaks and I’m ok with that
      Is radical transparency the best solution to expose injustice in this technocratic world, a world that is changing faster than law can keep up with?

      That question became even more relevant to me, a privacy activist, when I found myself in the Wikileaks archive, because I worked at Hacking Team 9 years ago.

      [...]

      This is a leak in the public interest, and I really feel that the personal and corporate damage is smaller than the improvement our society can gain from it. But to reach such an improvement, we have to focus on the bigger picture rather than getting distracted by the juicy details.


    • Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It
      Immediately my accelerator stopped working. As I frantically pressed the pedal and watched the RPMs climb, the Jeep lost half its speed, then slowed to a crawl. This occurred just as I reached a long overpass, with no shoulder to offer an escape. The experiment had ceased to be fun.

      At that point, the interstate began to slope upward, so the Jeep lost more momentum and barely crept forward. Cars lined up behind my bumper before passing me, honking. I could see an 18-wheeler approaching in my rearview mirror. I hoped its driver saw me, too, and could tell I was paralyzed on the highway.


    • 470,000 Vehicles At Risk After Hackers "Take Control & Crash" Jeep Cherokee From A Sofa 10 Miles Away




  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • Mental Illness Doesn’t Explain Mass Violence–but Neither Does ‘Islamic Extremism’
      With the latest mass shooting in Chattanooga, corporate media followed the usual pattern of being ready and willing to label violence as “terrorism” so long as the suspect is Muslim—e.g., Time‘s report on the shooting, “How to Stop the Next Domestic Terrorist” (7/20/15)—despite questions occasionally raised about whether “terrorism” is the appropriate frame to describe attacks on military installations (e.g., Slate, 7/17/15).




  • Transparency Reporting



    • 800 years post Magna Carta: Why no equal justice for all whistleblowers?
      IN LIGHT OF the Magna Carta's 800th birthday and what modern democracy is based on today, is there really equal justice for all?

      Whistleblowers Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are wanted. Chelsea Manning and Jeffrey Sterling are in gaol. John Kiriakou recently released from gaol. Thomas Drake and David Petraeus free. Free? If they all leaked classified information why are two free?

      Let’s look at each case pertaining to these whistleblowers apart from the Assange and Snowden cases.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife





  • Finance



    • Toshiba CEO quits over accounting scandal
      Toshiba Corp's (6502.T) chief executive Hisao Tanaka and a string of other senior officials resigned on Tuesday for their roles in the country's biggest accounting scandal in years.

      Tanaka will be temporarily replaced by Chairman Masashi Muromachi after an independent inquiry found the CEO had been aware the company had inflated its profits by $1.2 billion over a period of several years.


    • Greek Prime Minister Asked Putin For $10 Billion To "Print Drachmas", Greek Media Reports
      Back in January, when we reported what the very first official act of open European defiance by the then-brand new Greek prime minister Tsipras was (as a reminder it was his visit of a local rifle range where Nazis executed 200 Greeks on May 1, 1944) we noted that this was the start of a clear Greek pivot away from Europe and toward Russia.


    • Prof. Wolff joins The Big Picture RT's Thom Hartmann: "Is China’s Bubble About To Burst? Look Out US!"
      Prof. Wolff joins The Big Picture RT's Thom Hartmann to discuss the latest on China. China - the world's second biggest economy - recently saw its stock market plummet 30 percent in a month. Does this mean that next big economic crisis is right around the corner?




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Five Times Local Media Exposed ALEC's Secretive Agenda
      On July 22, the American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) annual meeting will once again see corporations and state lawmakers gather to discuss and vote on model legislation meant for introduction in state legislatures across the country. On the eve of the three-day conference in San Diego, Media Matters looks back at five examples of great reporting by local news teams who pulled back the curtain and held ALEC accountable for hosting lobbyists and legislators in secret meetings -- where they wrote corporate-supported bills blocking minimum wage hikes, attacking unions, and eliminating environmental regulations -- and previews this year's agenda.




  • Privacy



    • High Court Rules UK's Surveillance Powers Violate Human Rights
      UK's High Court found the rushed Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA) to be illegal under the European Convention on Human Rights and EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, both of which require respect for private and family life, as well as protection of personal data in the case of the latter.


    • Snowden to the IETF: Please make an internet for users, not the spies
      NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has urged the world's leading group of internet engineers to design a future 'net that puts the user in the center, and so protects people's privacy.

      Speaking via webcast to a meeting in Prague of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the former spy talked about a range of possible changes to the basic engineering of the global communications network that would make it harder for governments to carry out mass surveillance.

      The session was not recorded, but a number of attendees live-tweeted the confab. It was not an official IETF session, but one organized by attendees at the Prague event and using the IETF's facilities. It followed a screening of the film Citizenfour, which documents the story of Snowden leaking NSA files to journalists while in a hotel room in Hong Kong.


    • The Biggest Mistake AshleyMadison Customers Made: Using Their Credit Cards
      Digital extortionists are holding the sexual profiles of potentially 37 million adulterers hostage after a breach of infidelity website AshleyMadison.com. In a ransom message published on the site's homepage today, the hackers threaten to publish reams of private information unless AshleyMadison.com and its peer site, EstablishedMen.com, are taken offline. Among that information, the message states, are "all customer records" including "real names and addresses."


    • Organizational Doxing of Ashley Madison
      The -- depending on who is doing the reporting -- cheating, affair, adultery, or infidelity site Ashley Madison has been hacked. The hackers are threatening to expose all of the company's documents, including internal e-mails and details of its 37 million customers. Brian Krebs writes about the hackers' demands.


    • Andrés Iniesta loses Instagram account to Andrés Iniesta, Instagram apologises to Andrés Iniesta
      Instagram has apologised after it handed control of a Spanish user’s account over to a Barcelona football player with the same name.

      Andrés Iniesta, from Madrid, is the holder of the @ainiesta Instagram account. Andrés Iniesta, from Fuentealbilla, is the captain of Barcelona football club. The former Iniesta woke up on Wednesday to find that access to his Instagram account was blocked.




  • DRM



  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • If The UK Wants People To 'Respect' Copyright, Outlawing Ripping CDs Is Probably Not Helping
        We had two separate stories late last week about copyright issues in the UK, and it occurred to me that a followup relating one to the other might be in order. The first one, from Thursday, was about the UK's plan to try, once again, to push a new "education campaign" to teach people that "copyright is good." We've seen these campaigns pop up over and over again for decades now, and they tend to lead to complete ridicule and outright mockery. And yet, if you talk to film studio and record label execs, they continually claim that one of the most important things they need to do is to teach people to "respect" copyright through education campaigns.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Explaining (in Length and Depth) the Damage Matthew Garrett Did to Linux and to GNU/Linux Users
no matter how many threats we receive
 
CoC Gone Wrong: Celebrating Murder OK, Complaining About the Celebration Gets You Banned
Hopefully the NixOS Foundation will have a word with (maybe replace) the moderator/s
Gemini Links 12/09/2025: Familiarity and Secondary Dominants
Links for the day
Links 12/09/2025: "Bad Reviews" as Extortion Weapon, "Free Speech At Risk in America’s Schools" According to ACLU
Links for the day
Only One Speaker Does Not Do Sharecropping for MElon (in X.com)
The man who puts principles before PR/optics
The Mind of the 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI'
in a nutshell
A Day After "UEFI 9/11": UEFI Secure Boot Bypass
In the news today (right now), as published in the past few hours
Links 12/09/2025: Slop Code as Liability, Microsoft Outlook Down for Many
Links for the day
It's Still Not to Late to Turn Off "Secure Boot"
If people reboot their PC or server today, and it relies on "Secure Boot" on Sept. 12 or later, then depending on the firmware there may be trouble ahead
Links 12/09/2025: Shira Perlmutter is Back, “Software Per Se” Patent Rejections in In re McFadden
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Linux Plagiarism, Slopfarms Still Infesting Google News, Many Images Are Fake
Google is promoting plagiarism
"This Morning Might Turn Out to be an Interesting One for System Admins Who Haven't Updated Their Devices' Secure Boot Certificate" (If They Reboot)
Who asked for this anyway?
Gemini Links 12/09/2025: Metric System, Dumping Windows, and Software Architecture is Dead
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 11, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 11, 2025
Microsoft Admits the Workers Have Lost Trust (Endless Layoffs, 12-13 Rounds of Layoffs This Year), So Now It's Trotting out Its Peter Bright-Like Media Prop Jordan Novet
What they don't want people to pay attention to right now
Links 11/09/2025: Windows TCO and Russian Drones Invading Poland (EU/NATO)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/09/2025: xkcd, misfin, and Alhena 5.3.2
Links for the day
Repetition of Last Summer (Microsoft Breaking Dual-Boot Systems)
UEFI 9/11 is about to kick in
UEFI 'Secure Boot' Boiling Frogs (Cannot Turn Off 'Secure Boot')
"MSI laptop is locked on Secure Boot and doesn't allow me to turn it off"
UEFI 9/11 Aftermath - Part IV: The 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' and His 'Hideout' Holiday (Retreat From Reality)
Let's keep an eye on what matters
UEFI 9/11 Aftermath - Part III: Mr. 'Secure Boot' (Shim) and His Fake 'Holiday' (Sending My Wife and I Threatening E-mails on 9/11)
despite being on holiday, according to him, he finds time to instruct lawyers to contact my wife
UEFI 9/11 Aftermath - Part II: "The SecureBoot Thing Got Out of Hand."
The next few weeks might be... interesting
UEFI 9/11 Aftermath - Part I: "I Believe This Affects Thousands of Devices... Because Multiple Devices I Checked, Whether Client or Server [...] Affected."
Most people aren't even aware that this is happening or about to happen
The UEFI 9/11 - Part X - An Outline of the Series About Microsoft Sabotaging GNU/Linux (With Ramifications to Unfold Online in Coming Weeks as People Reboot)
Today is UEFI 9/11 (9/11/2025)
Ron Wyden: Microsoft Should be Held Accountable for Security Breaches (He Has Said This for Years Already, It Never Happens)
Negative media coverage isn't a fine and it does nothing to compensate Microsoft's billions of victims
Culture of silence: Ubisoft harassment convictions, Mozilla, Sylvestre Ledru & Debian make no comment
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Disable 'Secure Boot' (If It Lets You)
it doesn't put you in control
Links 11/09/2025: "Hey Hi" Ponzi Schemes at Oracle (Unpaid Contracts) and Cindy Cohn is Leaving the EFF
Links for the day
Longtime Red Hat Staff: Maybe Just Disable 'Secure Boot'
A refreshing take from Adam Williamson
Gemini Links 11/09/2025: Playdate Console, Dichotomy between the Real and the Digital
Links for the day
A Dozen Observations About "UEFI 9/11" Deflections
What we are expected to see, tentatively
The Microsoft AstroTurfing and Microsoft-Led Blame-Shifting Tactics Are Ahead of Us
Of course it has nothing to do with security, it's about control, i.e. them controlling everything
Celebrating Assassination is Bad Because It Legitimises Assassination of the People You Like, Too
Condoning or even celebrating political assassinations is bad optics (and taste)
The World's Richest Ponzi Scheme (Faking Value Using Net Waste)
The higher they go the harder they fall
We Could Dual-Boot Back in the 1990s, Why Has This Become So Difficult?
And prone to breakage
Being Conditioned to Accept Unreliable Computer Systems That Fail With Black Screen of Death (BSoD)
Welcome to 2025
Slopwatch: Google News is Still Promoting Many Fake Articles About "Linux", in Effect Rewarding Misinformation and Plagiarism
things continue to deteriorate
New Series: The Coup Against GNU/Linux Has Begun
today, this year in particular, we shall also focus on Secure Boot, which is sold based on a lie and tortures many computer user
New Paper on "BYOVD, but in firmware. Signed UEFI shells, vulnerable modules offer new paths for Secure Boot bypasses."
One might say digital "security theatre"
Links 11/09/2025: Oracle Layoffs, Drunk Pilots in Japan Airlines, US-Korea Tensions Grow
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 10, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 10, 2025
Xubuntu Site Compromised
Let's hope it is not a security breach
Links 10/09/2025: Retaliation at Facebook and Microsoft Reveals Almost 100 Security Holes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/09/2025: Annihilation of Self, The Future Eaters, and Leaving Academia
Links for the day
They Say That People Are Afraid of or Worried About "Hey Hi", But the Worriers Should be the Fools Who Invested in It
At the end of the day nobody should worry more than those who invested their money in this bubble
Harassment evidence: franceinfo's Clara Lainé report on Ubisoft prosecution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 10/09/2025: Microsoft Layoffs in "RTO" Clothing and Windows TCO, GitHub TCO
Links for the day
Blaming Everything on China
TikTok works for China. GAFAM works for fascists.
People Get Tired of "Hey Hi" (AI), Unlike the Subservient Money-Obsessed Media That Gets Paid to Pretend This Bubble Still Matters
"crash will be way bigger than dot.com burst in 90s. and that was Internet, actually transformative technology, not this expensive AI toy with direct dependency on the energy input which is not scalable"
Brett Wilson LLP Accepts That the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Filed a Case That Also Implicates My Wife (Everything is Connected)
They used to pretend that there were two separate cases
10 Reasons to Disable (or Enable) UEFI Secure Boot
Tomorrow the "trusted corporation" Microsoft will see a certificate expire
Gemini Links 10/09/2025: Hospital and Large Feeds
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 09, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 09, 2025
The Bluewashing of Red Hat is Being Completed, Many Staff Understand They'll be Made Redundant
Jim AllowHurst (Whitehurst) is meanwhile promoting Microsoft's agenda from within other companies
Throwing Away "Old" Computers (Mozilla and Other Climate Deniers)
Mozilla is not leftist