According to Variety, AT&T’s pay-TV business has lost a record 351, 000 traditional video customers in the second quarter, with the internet-delivered DirecTV Now service failing to fully offset the losses. From the report: In Q2, historically a seasonally weak period for the pay-TV business, DirecTV’s U.S. satellite division lost 156, 000 customers sequentially, dropping to 20.86 million, compared with a gain of 342, 000 in the year-earlier quarter. AT&T’s U-verse lost 195, 000 subs in the quarter, which was actually an improvement over the 391, 000 it lost in Q2 of 2016. AT&T touted that it gained 152, 000 DirecTV Now customers in Q2, after adding just 72, 000 in the first quarter of 2017. Overall, it had signed up 491, 000 DirecTV Now subs as of the end of June, after the OTT service launched seven months ago. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Sweden Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly All Citizens
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hacker News: Swedish media is reporting of a massive data breach in the Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) after the agency mishandled an outsourcing deal with IBM, which led to the leak of the private data about every vehicle in the country, including those used by both police and military. The data breach exposed the names, photos and home addresses of millions of Swedish citizen, including fighter pilots of Swedish air force, members of the military’s most secretive units, police suspects, people under the witness relocation program, the weight capacity of all roads and bridges, and much more. The incident is believed to be one of the worst government information security disasters ever. In 2015, the Swedish Transport Agency hand over IBM an IT maintenance contract to manage its databases and networks. However, the Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM’s entire database onto cloud servers, which covered details on every vehicle in the country, including police and military registrations, and individuals on witness protection programs. The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it. And what’s terrible is that the messages were sent in clear text. When the error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list themselves. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Sweden Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly All Citizens
Fourth Ethereum Platform Hacked This Month: Hacker Steals $8.4 Million From Veritaseum Platform
An anonymous reader writes: “Veritaseum has confirmed today that a hacker stole $8.4 million from the platform’s ICO on Sunday, July 23, ” reports Bleeping Computer. “This is the second ICO hack in the last week and the fourth hack of an Ethereum platform this month. An ICO (Initial Coin Offering) is similar to a classic IPO (Initial Public Offering), but instead of stocks in a company, buyers get tokens in an online platform. Users can keep tokens until the issuing company decides to buy them back, or they can sell the tokens to other users for Ethereum. Veritaseum was holding its ICO over the weekend, allowing users to buy VERI tokens for a product the company was preparing to launch in the realm of financial services.” The hacker breached its systems, stole VERI tokens and immediately dumped them on the market due to the high-demand. The hacker made $8.4 million from the token sale, which he immediately started to launder. In a post-mortem announcement, Middleton posted online today, the Veritaseum CEO said “the amount stolen was miniscule (less than 00.07%) although the dollar amount was quite material.” The CEO also suspects that “at least one corporate partner that may have dropped the ball and [might] be liable.” Previous Ethereum services hacks include Parity, CoinDash, and Classic Ether Wallet. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Fourth Ethereum Platform Hacked This Month: Hacker Steals $8.4 Million From Veritaseum Platform
Slackware, Oldest Linux Distro Still In Active Development, Turns 24
sombragris writes: July 17 marked the 24th anniversary of Slackware Linux, the oldest GNU/Linux still in active development, being created in 1993 by Patrick Volkerding, who still serves as its BDFL. Version 14.2 was launched last year, and the development version (Slackware-current) currently offers kernel 4.9.38, gcc 7.1, glibc 2.25, mesa 17.1.5, and KDE and Xfce as official desktops, with many others available as 3rd party packages. Slackware is also among the Linux distributions which have not adopted systemd as its init system; instead, it uses a modified BSD init which is quite simple and effective. Slackware is known to be a solid, stable and fast setup, with easy defaults which is appreciated by many Linux users worldwide. Phoronix has a small writeup noting the anniversary and there’s also a nice reddit thread. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Slackware, Oldest Linux Distro Still In Active Development, Turns 24
Chromium To Get Support For MP3
An anonymous reader shares a post: Chromium, the open source project behind Google Chrome, Opera and several other browsers, is going to support MP3. This would enable users and websites to play MP3 files in Chromium browser. A Chromium contributor informed about this, “We have approval from legal to go ahead and move MP3 into non-proprietary codecs list.” The MP3 support in Chromium is targeted for version 62. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Chromium To Get Support For MP3
Hacker Steals $30 Million Worth of Ethereum From Parity Multi-Sig Wallets
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: An unknown hacker has used a vulnerability in an Ethereum wallet client to steal over 153, 000 Ether, worth over $30 million dollars. The hack was possible due to a flaw in the Parity Ethereum client. The vulnerability allowed the hacker to exfiltrate funds from multi-sig wallets created with Parity clients 1.5 and later. Parity 1.5 was released on January 19, 2017. The attack took place around 19:00-20:00 UTC and was immediately spotted by Parity, a company founded by Gavin Wood, Ethereum’s founder. The company issued a security alert on its blog. The Ether stolen from Parity multi-sig accounts was transferred into this Ethereum wallet, currently holding 153, 017.021336727 Ether. Because Parity spotted the attack in time, a group named “The White Hat Group” used the same vulnerability to drain the rest of Ether stored in other Parity wallets that have not yet been stolen by the hacker. This money now resides in this Ethereum wallet. According to messages posted on Reddit and in a Gitter chat, The White Hat Group appears to be formed of security researchers and members of the Ethereum Project that have taken it into their own hands to secure funds in vulnerable wallets. Based on a message the group posted online, they plan to return the funds they took. Their wallet currently holds 377, 116.819319439311671493 Ether, which is over $76 million. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Hacker Steals $30 Million Worth of Ethereum From Parity Multi-Sig Wallets
Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) for Windows Pushes What Could Be Its Last Update
Popular open-source media player for Windows, Media Player Classic Home Cinema — or MPC-HC, has issued what it says could be the last update the app ever receives. The team writes: v1.7.13, the latest, and probably the last release of our project… For quite a few months now, or even years, the number of active developers has been decreasing and has inevitably reached zero. This, unfortunately, means that the project is officially dead and this release would be the last one. … Unless some people step up that is. So, if someone’s willing to really contribute and has C/C++ experience, let me know on IRC or via e-mail. Otherwise, all things come to an end and life goes on. It’s been a nice journey and I’m personally pretty overwhelmed having to write this post. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) for Windows Pushes What Could Be Its Last Update
Microsoft Yanks Three Bad Patches Of Their Last Outlook Patch
An anonymous reader quotes ComputerWorld’s Woody Leonhard: I just received word from Gunter Born that Microsoft has pulled three of its Outlook patches… There’s no specific recommendation that you uninstall the yanked patches — indeed, there’s no description of the problems caused by the latest round — but earlier versions of the bad patches-of-patches had a nasty habit of crashing Outlook… Microsoft still hasn’t fixed any of the Office 2007 bugs it introduced in the June security patches. If you’re keeping score at home, the yanked patches are: KB 4011042 – July 5, 2017, update for Outlook 2010 KB 3191849 – June 27, 2017, update for Outlook 2013 KB 3213654 – June 30, 2017, update for Outlook 2016 Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Microsoft Yanks Three Bad Patches Of Their Last Outlook Patch
Chinese Court Seizes Millions in Assets of LeEco Founder as Conglomerate’s Troubles Grow
Chinese Internet tycoon and LeEco founder Jia Yueting’s ambition to challenge the likes of Apple and Tesla looks even more in doubt after $182 million of his assets were frozen by a Shanghai court following unpaid loans. From a report: Jia and LeEco came in for stinging criticism from Chinese media Wednesday, which warned that the Internet streaming company and hardware manufacturer was set to fall into further trouble, with the asset freeze as only the beginning. LeEco’s development “is too big, too quick and too reckless, ” Beijing Business Today wrote. “Developing TV [programs and TV sets], mobile phones, [electric] cars and sports programs all consume too much cash at the same time. Not only can the capital not sustain these developments; fractures are inevitable in areas ranging from human resources, technology and management.” According to the official Xinhua news agency, the Shanghai High People’s Court last week ruled in favor of China Merchants Bank’s application to freeze $182 million in assets belonging to Jia, his wife and three LeEco affiliates. Further reading: LeEco Said To Lay Off Over 80 Percent of US Workforce, LeEco’s CEO Jia Yueting Says Company Overstretched, Now Running Out of Cash, and China’s LeEco Calls Off Its $2 Billion Purchase of TV Maker Vizio. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Chinese Court Seizes Millions in Assets of LeEco Founder as Conglomerate’s Troubles Grow
California Has So Much Solar Power That Other States Are Paid To Take It
“On 14 days during March, Arizona utilities got a gift from California: free solar power, ” reported the Los Angeles Times. Mic reports: California is generating so much solar energy that it is resorting to paying other states to take the excess electricity in order to prevent overloading power lines. According to the Los Angeles Times, Arizona residents have already saved millions in 2017 thanks to California’s contribution. The state, which produced little to no solar energy just 15 years ago, has made strides — it single-handedly has nearly half of the country’s solar electricity generating capacity… When there’s too much solar energy, there is a risk of the electricity grid overloading. This can result in blackouts. In times like this, California offers other states a financial incentive to take their power. But it’s not as environmentally friendly as one would think. Take Arizona, for example. The state opts to put a pin in its own solar energy sources instead of fossil fuel power, which means greenhouse gas emissions aren’t getting any better due to California’s overproduction. The Los Angeles Times suggests over-construction of natural gas plants created part of the problem — Californians now pay roughly 50% more than the rest of the country for power — but they report that power supplies could become more predictable when battery storage technologies improve. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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California Has So Much Solar Power That Other States Are Paid To Take It