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Copies Of Mueller Report Taken Down Because Of ... Copyright Infringement?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Apr '19

23 Apr '19

For those pushing for mandatory copyright filtering, here’s yet another cautionary tale: copies of the (redacted) Mueller Report were taken down from PDF-hosting site Scribd, even though it is in the public domain. It seems clear this was an inadvertent result of automatic filtering policies; one of the many big-name publishers who had put out for-sale copies of the report had used automated processes to pass the information to Scribd, and these processes had blocked everybody’s attempts to upload copies of the report, even though it didn’t own the copyright. <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190420/23233942052/scribds-takedown-pub…>

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Streaming TV Has Become An Expensive, Complicated Mess
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Apr '19

22 Apr '19

<https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=122224…>: But this entertainment nirvana never actually arrived. First came pricey broadband services required to stream Internet video, often delivered by the same cable wires consumers longed to cut. Then came a proliferation of services - offered by Netflix, Amazon, Hulu plus and more - each with a bill of its own. Then came more boxes, wires and remotes. And finally came the question: How exactly do I get my Star Wars fix? Maybe a bit US-centric, but I think that also reflects the situation for streaming here as well. The article talks about “cord-cutting” -- as you may know, most people in the US have been watching conventional TV stations through cable connections, not through broadcasts. “Cord-cutting” is the increasing tendency of customers to terminate their cable TV accounts. But those same cable companies are also ISPs, and given the limitations on competition between ISPs in the US (thanks to the current regime’s allergy to enforcing meaningful net-neutrality legislation), those same companies will get the money from customers wanting to watch streaming video.

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Why are you still using Excel? Is it time to up your game and move to Python and Pandas or R?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Apr '19

19 Apr '19

A heartfelt plea to habitual spreadsheet-wielders in favour of more advanced data-analysis tools <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8wO4ppE9L8>. Also mentions some of the more notorious cases of Excel bugs/misfeatures impacting the correctness of scientific research results.

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Olive Video Editor
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Apr '19

17 Apr '19

Came across this tryout <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AvfMMjHX-M> of yet another open-source video editor, called Olive. The project is only about a year old, but it’s looking very promising. I recall Thomas wanting the ability to enable/disable clips in the timeline; I believe this one can do that. It may still be under development, but for what it’s worth, the reviewer didn’t suffer a single crash or loss of work during the video. ;)

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DARPA Wants To Make a Better, More Secure Version of WhatsApp
by Peter Reutemann 15 Apr '19

15 Apr '19

'The Defense and Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) appears to be in the process of developing its own ultra secure communication platform. The program is called "Resilient Anonymous Communication for Everyone," or RACE, and it will be similar to WhatsApp in that it will be for everyone to use. Trusted Reviews reports: The objectives of the program are to create a distributed messaging system that can do three things: Exist completely within a network; Provide confidentiality, integrity and availability of messaging; and Preserve privacy to any participant in the system. DARPA seem to be putting security front and center, and the description of the project claims that "compromised system data and associated networked communications should not be helpful for comprising any additional parts of the system," meaning that DARPA are keen that one breach shouldn't also give them a leg up on access to other parts of the system. So, will we soon be using a U.S government branded DARPA? Probably not, but the chances are that RACE will go some way to creating a messaging app that's resilient to attacks, with the protocol and security they find no doubt dripping through to consumer tech and features in the coming years. ' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/04/15/2052250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Hackers Could Read Your Hotmail, MSN, and Outlook Emails by Abusing Microsoft Support
by Peter Reutemann 15 Apr '19

15 Apr '19

'On Saturday, Microsoft confirmed that some users of the company's email service had been targeted by hackers. A hacker or group of hackers had first broken into a customer support account for Microsoft, and then used that to gain access to information related to customers' email accounts such as the subject lines of their emails and who they've communicated with. But the issue is much worse than previously reported, with the hackers able to access email content from a large number of Outlook, MSN, and Hotmail email accounts, according to a source who witnessed the attack in action and described it before Microsoft's statement, as well as screenshots provided to Motherboard. Microsoft confirmed to Motherboard that hackers gained access to the content of some customers' emails.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/04/15/1554226 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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A Hacker Has Dumped Nearly One Billion User Records Over the Past Two Months
by Peter Reutemann 15 Apr '19

15 Apr '19

'A hacker who spoke with ZDNet in February about wanting to put up for sale the data of over one billion users is getting dangerously close to his goal after releasing another 65.5 million records last week and reaching a grand total of 932 million records overall. From a report: The hacker's name is Gnosticplayers, and he's responsible for the hacks of 44 companies, including last week's revelations. Since mid-February, the hacker has been putting batches of hacked data on Dream Market, a dark web marketplace for selling illegal products, such as guns, drugs, and hacking tools. He's released data from companies like 500px, UnderArmor, ShareThis, GfyCat, and MyHeritage, just to name the bigger names. Releases have been grouped in four rounds -- Round 1 (620 million user records), Round 2 (127 million user records), Round 3 (93 million user records), and Round 4 (26.5 million user records).' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/04/15/1920217 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Former Firefox VP on What It's Like To Be Both a Partner of Google and a Competitor via Google Chrome
by Peter Reutemann 15 Apr '19

15 Apr '19

'Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation arm of Google's parent company Alphabet, plans to build a $1 billion high-tech neighborhood in Toronto. The problem? It is facing an opposition from residents who have called for its demise. As the backlash gains momentum, it could force Sidewalk Labs to abandon or alter its vision. On paper, Sidewalk Labs' idea arguably has some merits: It wishes to "set new standards" for how cities are designed and built. But some are apprehensive of Google's plans, because the company has a knack for assuming more control over things and killing local competition. Johnathan Nightingale, a former VP of Firefox, has seen such behavior first hand. He draws some parallels: I spent 8 years at Mozilla working on Firefox and for almost all of that time Google was our biggest partner. Our revenue share deal on search drove 90% of Mozilla's income. When I started at Mozilla in 2007, there was no Google Chrome and most folks we spoke with inside were Firefox fans. They were building an empire on the web, we were building the web itself. I think our friends inside Google genuinely believed that. At the individual level, their engineers cared about most of the same things we did. Their product and design folks made many decisions very similarly and we learned from watching each other. But Google as a whole is very different than individual Googlers. Google Chrome ads started appearing next to Firefox search terms. Gmail and Google Docs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox. Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as "incompatible." All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. But we were still a search partner, so we'd say "hey what gives?" And every time, they'd say, "oops. That was accidental. We'll fix it in the next push in 2 weeks." Over and over. Oops. Another accident. We'll fix it soon. We want the same things. We're on the same team. There were dozens of oopses. Hundreds maybe? I'm all for "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" but I don't believe Google is that incompetent. This is not a thread about blaming Google for Firefox troubles though. We at Mozilla wear that ourselves, me more than anyone for my time as Firefox VP. But I see the same play happening here in my city and I don't like it. And for me it means two things: 1. The question is not whether individual Sidewalk Labs people have pure motives. I know some of them, just like I know plenty on the Chrome team. They're great people. But focus on the behavior of the organism as a whole. At the macro level, Google/Alphabet is very intentional. When Google wants to get a thing done, it is very effective. Mistakes happen, but when you see a sustained pattern of "oops" and delays from this organization -- you're being outfoxed. Get there faster than I did.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/04/15/0326208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Is The Linux Desktop In Trouble?
by Peter Reutemann 14 Apr '19

14 Apr '19

'"I believe that, as Microsoft keeps moving Windows to a Desktop-as-a-Service model, Linux will be the last traditional PC desktop operating system standing," writes ZDNet contributing editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. "But that doesn't mean I'm blind to its problems." First, even Linus Torvalds is tired of the fragmentation in the Linux desktop. In a recent [December 2018] TFiR interview with Swapnil Bhartiya, Torvalds said, "Chromebooks and Android are the path toward the desktop." Why? Because we don't have a standardized Linux desktop. For example, better Linux desktops, such as Linux Mint, provide an easy way to install applications, but under the surface, there are half-a-dozen different ways to install programs. That makes life harder for developers. Torvalds wishes "we were better at having a standardized desktop that goes across the distributions." Torvalds thinks there's been some progress. For software installation, he likes Flatpak. This software program, like its rival Snap, lets you install and maintain programs across different Linux distros. At the same time, this rivalry between Red Hat (which supports Flatpak) and Canonical (which backs Snap) bugs Torvalds. He's annoyed at how the "fragmentation of the different vendors have held the desktop back." None of the major Linux distributors -- Canonical, Red Hat, SUSE -- are really all that interested in supporting the Linux desktop. They all have them, but they're focused on servers, containers, the cloud, and the Internet of Things (IoT). That's, after all, is where the money is. Linux desktop distros "tend to last for five or six years and then real life gets in the way of what's almost always a volunteer effort..." the article argues. "It is not easy building and supporting a Linux desktop. It comes with a lot of wear and tear on its developers with far too little reward." His solution? Having a foundation create a common desktop for all Linux distros, so the Linux world could finally reap the benefits of standardization. "This would mean that many more Linux desktop developers could make a living from their work. That would improve the Linux desktop overall quality. "It's a virtuous cycle, which would help everyone."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/04/13/0151256 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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android browsers rated
by Ian Young 14 Apr '19

14 Apr '19

Saw this while looking at the Exton Linux website. May be of interest to those with recent Android phones. https://joyofandroid.com/fastest-browsers-for-android/ ~ Ian Y

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