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Canadian Police Have Had BlackBerry’s Global Decryption Key Since 2010

Justin Ling and Jordan Pearson, reporting for Vice News: A high-level surveillance probe of Montreal’s criminal underworld shows that Canada’s federal policing agency has had a global encryption key for BlackBerry devices since 2010. The revelations are contained in a stack of court documents that were made public after members of a Montreal crime syndicate pleaded guilty to their role in a 2011 gangland murder. The documents shed light on the extent to which the smartphone manufacturer, as well as telecommunications giant Rogers, cooperated with investigators. According to technical reports by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that were filed in court, law enforcement intercepted and decrypted roughly one million PIN-to-PIN BlackBerry messages in connection with the probe. The report doesn’t disclose exactly where the key — effectively a piece of code that could break the encryption on virtually any BlackBerry message sent from one device to another — came from. But, as one police officer put it, it was a key that could unlock millions of doors. Government lawyers spent almost two years fighting in a Montreal courtroom to keep this information out of the public record. Motherboard has published another article in which it details how Canadian police intercept and read encrypted BlackBerry messages. “BlackBerry to Canadian court: Please don’t reveal the fact that we backdoored our encryption, ” privacy and security activist Christopher Soghoian wittily summarizes the report. “Canadian gov: If you use Blackberry consumer encryption, you’re a “dead chicken”. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Canadian Police Have Had BlackBerry’s Global Decryption Key Since 2010

Man Deletes His Entire Company With One Line of Bad Code

Reader JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Marco Marsala appears to have deleted his entire company with one mistaken piece of code. By accidentally telling his computer to delete everything in his servers, the hosting provider has seemingly removed all trace of his company and the websites that he looks after for his customers. Marsala wrote on a Centos help forum, “I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1535 customers and I use Ansible to automate some operations to be run on all servers. Last night I accidentally ran, on all servers, a Bash script with a rm -rf foo/bar with those variables undefined due to a bug in the code above this line. All servers got deleted and the offsite backups too because the remote storage was mounted just before by the same script (that is a backup maintenance script).” The terse “rm -rf” is so famously destructive that it has become a joke within some computing circles, but not to this guy. Can this example finally serve as a textbook example of why you need to make offsite backups that are physically removed from the systems you’re archiving?”Rm -rf” would mark the block as empty, and unless the programmer hasn’t written anything new, he should be able to recover nearly all of the data. Something about the story feels weird. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Man Deletes His Entire Company With One Line of Bad Code

Microsoft Sues US Justice Department, Asks Court To Declare Secrecy Orders Unconstitutional

Todd Bishop, reporting for GeekWire: Microsoft is suing the U.S. Justice Department, asking a federal judge to declare unconstitutional a provision of U.S. law that lets the government keep Microsoft and other tech companies from informing their customers when investigators seek access to emails and other cloud data. The suit, filed moments ago in U.S. District Court in Seattle, targets Section 2705(b) of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which allows the government to seek and obtain secrecy orders preventing companies from letting their customers know when their data is the target of a federal warrant, subpoena or court order. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, recently criticized the 30-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act as outdated during his testimony in February before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee — bringing along IBM’s first laptop, released the same year, to help illustrate his point.Microsoft argues that these “indefinite gag orders” violate the First Amendment rights to inform customers. Furthermore, the company adds that the law also “flouts” the Fourth Amendment, which requires the government to give a notice to the concerned person when his or her property is being searched or seized. “This is a First Amendment fight that needed to get picked and I’m glad Microsoft picked it. Just as in the real world with physical seizures, secrecy in digital seizures should be the exception and not the rule. Yet as the Microsoft complaint shows, it’s receiving thousands of law enforcement gag orders every year and more than two-thirds of them are eternal gags with no end data, ” said Kevin Bankston, internet freedom advocate and digital rights lawyer. “This is clearly unconstitutional, yet with so many orders per year, it makes sense to strike at the root with a facial challenge to the law rather than try and challenge them all individually. And based on previous similar cases around gag orders in national security cases, I think they’ll succeed in striking this overbroad law down.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Sues US Justice Department, Asks Court To Declare Secrecy Orders Unconstitutional

Homebrew patch makes many Oculus VR games perfectly playable on HTC Vive [Updated]

What’re those SteamVR “chaperone” grid lines doing in an Oculus-exclusive game? Find out yourself if you own an HTC Vive and use the new Revive patch on many “exclusive” Oculus games. (credit: Sam Machkovech) In the race to the top of virtual reality, Oculus and HTC have kicked off a hardware showdown the likes of which we haven’t seen since the “Nintendon’t” days. However, the war includes a curious compatibility issue: HTC’s current software hub, SteamVR, can be accessible by Oculus headset wearers, but Oculus Home doesn’t currently support the HTC Vive. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has publicly stated that “we can only extend our SDK to work with other headsets if the manufacturer allows us to do so,” seemingly passing the buck to HTC and Valve in regard to why its Oculus Store games don’t natively support the other leading PC headset. Valve has denied this assertion . Either way, we no longer have to wait for the companies to settle their legal and licensing differences, thanks to the efforts of the LibreVR plugin, dubbed Revive . Short version: it works, as proven by the above screenshot we snapped of pack-in Oculus game Lucky’s Tale running within the SteamVR interface (complete with its “chaperone” boundary lines). The author’s test system, which includes a 4.2 GHz i7 processor and a GTX 980Ti, ran all test games without hitches in performance, while other users have reported similarly smooth performance on “VR-ready” Windows 10 PCs. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Homebrew patch makes many Oculus VR games perfectly playable on HTC Vive [Updated]

Chrome 50 ends support for Windows XP, OS X 10.6, other old versions

Google Chrome version 50 was released to the browser’s stable channel yesterday, and in addition to a handful of new features and security fixes , the update also ends support for a wide range of operating systems that have been supported since Chrome launched on those platforms. Windows XP, Windows Vista, OS X 10.6, OS X 10.7, and OS X 10.8 are no longer supported. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, since Google promised last November to end support for these older OS versions in April of 2016. Old versions of Chrome installed on these OSes won’t stop working (for now), but they’ll no longer receive updates and there’s no guarantee that things like Google account sign-in and data syncing will continue to work. If you’re still using one of these operating systems, you have a couple of options. One is to upgrade to a newer OS, assuming your hardware can handle it. Security patches for Windows XP stopped in April of 2014 , and patches for OS X 10.6 stopped a few months before that . Updates for OS X 10.7 and 10.8 ended roughly when versions 10.10 and 10.11 were released, respectively, since Apple’s unofficial policy is to provide security fixes for the most recent OS X release and the two previous releases. Windows Vista is still getting bare-minimum security patches from Microsoft, but that ends in April of 2017 . Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Chrome 50 ends support for Windows XP, OS X 10.6, other old versions

AMC Theaters is considering letting people text during movies

Just as AMC Theaters was starting to win customers back by replacing every old seat in its auditoriums with recliners , the company wants to destroy that good will among moviegoers. That’s because CEO Adam Aron thinks letting people use their phones during a movie would be a good idea. “When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off their phone, don’t ruin the movie, they hear ‘please cut off your left arm above the elbow, ‘” Aron tells Variety . “You can’t tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That’s not how they live their life.” Yes, he actually said that. This could be seen as an extension of recreating a home-like experience at a theater, vis a vis said recliner seats. But the difference here is that if you’re using your phone while watching a flick at home, you’re only affecting yourself and maybe your significant other — not the 100 or more people who paid to get into the theater. Movie theaters and places of worship are a few of the remaining places where using a cellphone is verboten, and by pandering to this demographic’s horrible habit AMC is stripping away common courtesy and setting a gross precedent in the name of profits. Aron says that certain sections where texting would be allowed is one possibility for this, while the more likely situation would be having specific auditoriums set up to be “more texting friendly.” If the chain is willing to kick out someone wearing Google Glass for fear of piracy, though, how is it going to differentiate someone texting from a person recording what’s on the screen with their phone? Contrast this with The Alamo Drafthouse which will happily eject you from a showing if you’re talking or texting, or won’t even let you into the auditorium if you’re late. As you can imagine, Twitter is lighting up with people decrying this , and for good reason: It’s an absolutely stupid move that could drive away already loyal customers in an effort to chase those it isn’t reaching anyway. “22-year-olds like to shoplift! What can we do??” — if the AMC CEO ran Macy’s — Scott Weinberg (@scottEweinberg) April 13, 2016 And that’s one way to keep me out of AMC theaters. Really hope they reconsider. https://t.co/DNthAggJIs — Chris Pugh (@ChrisLikesDinos) April 13, 2016 No @CEOAdam , I don’t want to go to a theater where people can text. We already have that, it’s a living room. #amctheaters — Rachel Stuhler (@RachelStuhler) April 13, 2016 Source: Variety

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AMC Theaters is considering letting people text during movies

The ‘Game of Thrones’ credits are more fun in 360-degrees

There are still ten days to go until Game of Thrones season six debuts, but HBO is doing its best to keep fans’ appetites for new footage satiated until then. After dropping a dingy new trailer on Monday, and some behind-the-scenes footage yesterday, it’s now released a 360-degree video of the show’s opening credits on Facebook. The extended sequence lets you explore the famous clockwork map of Westeros and Essos. The map is arranged inside a sphere, which means looking in the right direction will give you a little peek across the water at Sothoryos and the Basilisk Isles. Many of the show’s iconic locations are there, from King’s Landing and Winterfell to Dorne. There are more than a few easter eggs to discover just by looking around as well, including a glimpse of an unnamed direwolf by the wall — make of that what you will — and a PG-13 view of the Titan of Braavos. Via: Deadline Source: Game of Thrones (Facebook)

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The ‘Game of Thrones’ credits are more fun in 360-degrees

Clinton Donor Confirms Presence of Static Noise Machine at Secretive Colorado Fundraiser

Last week, a local Denver journalist named Stan Bush reported that Hillary Clinton’s campaign appeared to be using a hidden static noise machine to prevent reporters and other passerby from hearing the candidate’s stump speech at an outdoor fundraiser held at the private residence of Colorado’s governor, John Hickenlooper. The general allegation hung in odd kind of limbo, however, since Bush managed to record the machine’s ( inherently indiscriminate ) sound but was unable to photograph the actual device, while Clinton’s press shop ignored reporters’ attempts to confirm the machine’s existence. Meanwhile, the underlying question went unanswered: Why was Clinton using a static noise machine in the first place? Read more…

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Clinton Donor Confirms Presence of Static Noise Machine at Secretive Colorado Fundraiser

Using synthetic nervous system, paralyzed man is first to move again

(credit: Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center/ Batelle ) With a paralyzing spinal cord injury, the biological wiring that hooks up our controlling brains to our useful limbs gets snipped, leading to permanent loss of sensation and control and usually a lifetime of extra health care. Researchers have spent years working to repair those lost connections, allowing paralyzed patients to  sip coffee and enjoy a beer with robotic limbs controlled by just their minds. Now, researchers have gone a step further, allowing a paralyzed person to control his own hand with just his mind. In a study published Wednesday in Nature, researchers report using a “ neural bypass ” that reconnects a patient’s mental commands for movement to responsive muscles in his limbs, creating somewhat of a synthetic nervous system. The pioneering patient, Ian Burkhart, a 24-year-old man left with quadriplegia after a diving accident almost six years ago, can once again move his hand. In the pilot study he could control movement of individual fingers, grasp big and small objects, swipe a credit card, and play Guitar Hero . The advance may open the door to restorative treatments for paralyzed individuals, allowing them to have independent movement—and lives. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Using synthetic nervous system, paralyzed man is first to move again

Piracy dooms motion picture industry to yet another record-breaking box-office year

Once again the MPAA has released its box-office numbers for the year, and once again, this year has smashed all records (as has been the case throughout our young century ) ( really !). As always, the astronomical rise-and-rise of their fortunes is somehow used to launch a call for more publicly subsidized enforcement against “piracy.” (more…)

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Piracy dooms motion picture industry to yet another record-breaking box-office year