boston-globe – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Over 8,000 Uber, Lyft drivers fail new Massachusetts background check

More than 8, 000 Uber and Lyft drivers have been denied licenses to operate in Massachusetts under a new, stricter state background check law , according to the Boston Globe . The most common reason? Issues with the driver’s license status, including suspensions. Under the new law, which went into effect in January, drivers for ride-hailing companies must undergo a two-part background check, one from the companies and one by the state. Out of 70, 789 applicants, 8.206 drivers were rejected, according to a state review. Hundreds were turned down because they had serious crimes on their record, including violent or sexual offenses. Others had drunk or reckless driving offenses. 51 applications came from alleged sex offenders. Uber has faced criticism in the past over its handling of background checks. District attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco filed a civil suit against the company in 2014, claiming it failed to unearth the criminal records of 25 drivers in those areas. But, both Uber and Lyft point out that the Massachusetts background check delves much deeper into a person’s history than theirs do, which is unfair to drivers who are trying to turn their lives around. “Under Massachusetts law, Lyft’s commercial background check provider, like all consumer reporting agencies, is legally prevented from looking back further than seven years into driver applicants’ histories, ” Lyft told the Boston Globe in a statement. “The state does not face the same limitation, which likely explains why a small percentage of our drivers failed the state’s background check while passing ours.” “Thousands of people in Massachusetts have lost access to economic opportunities as a result of a screening that includes an unfair and unjust indefinite lookback period, ” Uber said in its own statement. “We have an opportunity to repair the current system in the rules process so that people who deserve to work are not denied the opportunity.” Massachusetts is hardly the first state to push back against ride-hailing companies. Now that Uber and Lyft are becoming ubiquitous across the country, and with self-driving cars on the horizon, over 30 states have passed regulations to tackle some of the companies’ thornier issues. Via: Cnet Source: Boston Globe

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Over 8,000 Uber, Lyft drivers fail new Massachusetts background check

Security writer recovers from massive revenge cyberattack

Journalists are no stranger to making enemies bent on retaliation. However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to survive that retaliation in internet era… just ask security writer Brian Krebs. An unknown party knocked his website offline last week with a massive distributed denial of service attack (620Gbps of non-stop data) as revenge for exposing two major cyberattack sellers who’ve since been arrested. He’s only back online after taking advantage of Google’s Project Shield , which protects journalists against censorship-oriented denial of service campaigns. His previous anti-DDoS provider, Akamai, had little choice but to drop him — the company tells the Boston Globe that a sustained attack on that level would have cost the company “millions.” The campaign might not have required an elaborate effort, either. Krebs believes that the attackers took advantage of a botnet made up of hacked Internet of Things devices like DVRs, home internet routers and security cameras , many of which have poor or even unchangeable passwords. A larger attack recently played havoc with a French web host using similar tactics. There’s also the chance that the culprits used spoofing, which magnifies attacks by tricking machines into sending reply messages to the victim. To Krebs, the incident highlights the dangers to free speech in the modern era. It’s not just that it’s relatively trivial to mount a censorship campaign, it’s that the cost of defending yourself against that campaign can be prohibitive. One anti-DDoS service estimated that an Akamai-level defense would cost Krebs over $150, 000 per year. How could any small-scale news outfit afford that kind of protection? A concerted effort to clamp down on device exploits and block spoofed traffic could be vital not just to improving basic internet security, but protecting freedom of expression. Countries with a penchant for censorship can easily use these data floods to silence critics, and they might just try so long as it’s easy. Source: Krebs on Security , Boston Globe

Lost Bakshi Lord of the Rings footage found

If you remember the first film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings , the 1978 animated version by Ralph Bakshi–the legendary outsider director behind Fritz the Cat , Wizards , American Pop and Fire and Ice –you’ll recall the experience was a mixed bag. The movie was a dark, moody, oversaturated vision of Tolkien’s world, with stunning design and many memorable scenes. Bakshi used rotoscoping to trace live footage for animation, and posterization to give it a rough, hand-made look. Both techniques allowed many corners to be cut, but at the time, the film’s PR claimed Rings was the “the first movie painting.” Sadly, Bakshi’s 133-minute film left viewers stranded after the battle at Helm’s Deep, just as Gollum is about to lead Sam and Frodo into Mordor. Roughly two-thirds through Tolkien’s three-part story, Bakshi didn’t get to made the final installment. Rankin-Bass, the studio behind the 1977 TV adaptation of The Hobbit , churned out The Return of the King as a “sequel” in 1980, with little artistic resemblance to Bakshi’s vision. Now, quietly, some of the scenes from that 1978 classic have been rescued from the “cutting room floor,” Bakshi, now 75, said when I reached him via email this week. Eddie Bakshi, Bakshi’s son, has been busy scanning in original “cel” artwork from Bakshi’s archives, timing them to the cartoon’s original exposure sheets, and posting the scenes on Bakshi’s Facebook page . (The Facebook page also includes clips from Bakshi’s other films, though it appears none of these are new.) The particular Rings footage that has been restored comes from the Gandalf vs. Balrog fight sequence, and it is brief. One clip is a three-shot, 12-second sequence of the two characters falling into the void, titled “ Gandalf recalls fighting the Balrog. ” The other is a 10-second shot described as “ Gandalf duels with the Balrog and smashes into the endless staircase. ” In the film, the Balrog battle was recounted via minimally-animated still images. “If you’re getting close to delivery, it’s better to cut the animation out to make the scene work, than racing to reanimate it to make the cut work,” Bakshi said, recalling the hectic atmosphere as the film’s deadline loomed. Asked why Gandalf and the Balrog look quite different in these new scenes, compared to the rotoscoped Gandalf and Balrog seen on The Bridge of Khazad-dûm, Bakshi said, “Well, it’s hazy, but I was trying to make memories different than the real time story. I was wrestling with trying to separate the styles.” It’s unclear what other lost scenes from The Lord of the Rings might be found, shot and posted. Due to low budgets and little wiggle room to fix, reanimate or make cuts, “Very little or nothing ended up on the floor,” Bakshi said. If any gems are discovered, Eddie Bakshi will decide whether they are worthy of reshooting. For the elder Bakshi, it’s “been there, done it.” Bakshi fans should feel nostalgia for this old footage, which evoked the days of hand-drawn animation: “It was great to see it again,” he added, “but I got aggravated at the animator again for making the mistake 30 years later.” Still, Bakshi was effusive in his praise for his team of artists who made the movie, which included a young Tim Burton, in his first job out of college. “My animators–old school–were the greatest ever,” Bakshi said, “barring none.”