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07.22.15

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

Posted in News Roundup at 8:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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      Yes but RFB 5 is new… and it’s a closed, secret, previously unpublished protocol (unlike earlier RFB 3.x versions).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.

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