Tag: more-at-boing

High-rez scan Poe’s "Raven," illustrated by Dore

The Library of Congress’s website hosts a high-resolution scan of a rare edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” illustrated by Gustave Doré. The title-page is at page 11 , the list of illustrations is on page 14 . The illustrations are amazing, like no other illustrated Poe I’ve seen. I’ve collected my favorites below, and there are a lot of them — honestly, it was impossible to choose. The Raven / by Edgar Allan Poe ; illustrated by Gustave Doré ; with comment by Edmund C. Stedman. ( via Reddit )        

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High-rez scan Poe’s "Raven," illustrated by Dore

Pirate Bay uploads up by 50% in 2013

2013 was a banner year for the Pirate Bay, despite having been forced to change domain names half-a-dozen times. The site saw a 50% increase in uploads in 2013 , to 2.8 million links, presently being swarmed by nearly 19 million users. The Pirate Bay is reportedly developing a peer-to-peer browser that will be much harder to block using existing censorship techniques. Pirate Bay Uploads Surge 50% in a Year, Despite Anti-Piracy Efforts [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]        

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Pirate Bay uploads up by 50% in 2013

Sherlock and co are finally in the public domain

Patrick writes, “After more than 125 years and countless crappy incarnations on film, A federal judge has issued a declarative judgment stating that Holmes, Watson, 221B Baker Street, the dastardly Professor Moriarty and other elements included in the 50 Holmes works Arthur Conan Doyle published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law and can be freely used by creators without paying any licensing fee to the Conan Doyle estate.” The estate are notorious bullies, and have relied upon bizarre legal theories to extract funds from people who use the Sherlock canon characters in new works, even though those characters come from stories that are largely in the public domain. “They’ve heard about the way the estate is going around bullying people,” said Darlene Cypser, a lawyer in Denver and the author of a self-published trilogy about the young Holmes, for which the estate initially demanded a licensing fee. (She declined to pay, she said.) “This has been coming for some time. I’m glad Les decided to take it up.” Several other authors and publishers of Holmes-based work reported receiving somewhat friendlier versions of a threatening letter cited in Mr. Klinger’s complaint. In the letter Mr. Lellenberg suggested that the estate regularly worked with “Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and similar retailers” to “weed out unlicensed uses of Sherlock Holmes,” and would not hesitate to do so with Mr. Klinger’s volume as well. Mr. Klinger did pay a fee for a similar collection in 2011 at the insistence of his earlier publisher, but this time said he is calling the estate’s bluff. “It’s the ultimate case of the emperor having no clothes,” said Jonathan Kirsch, a publishing lawyer who represents him. “Everyone is making the decision to pay for permission they don’t need to avoid the costs and risks of litigation.” Suit Says Sherlock Belongs to the Ages [Jennifer Schuessler/NYT] ( Thanks, Patrick ! ) ( Image: A Study in Scarlet (Beeton’s Christmas Annual) , a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from 43021516@N06’s photostream )        

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Sherlock and co are finally in the public domain

Archie comics CEO being sued for calling employees "penis"

Male employees are suing Archie Comics’ CEO Nancy Silberkleit for gender discrimination. Her alleged workplace behavior, reported in the New York Daily News , is bizarre: – refuses to call male employees by their names and instead refers to all of them as “Penis.” – frequently yells “Penis! Penis! Penis!” in staff meetings. – invites Hell’s Angels into the office to intimidate employees. – frequently inquires about the location of a handgun and 750 rounds of ammunition she believes her late husband kept in the office. – stalking employees and their families “Silberkleit contends that the case should be tossed out because white males are not ‘a protected class.'” (Thanks, chellberty!)        

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Archie comics CEO being sued for calling employees "penis"

Android gives you the ability to deny your sensitive data to apps

Android privacy just got a lot better. The 4.3 version of Google’s mobile operating system now has hooks that allow you to override the permissions requested by the apps you install. So if you download a flashlight app that wants to harvest your location and phone ID , you can install it, and then use an app like AppOps Launcher to tell Android to withhold the information. Peter Ecklersley, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has written up a good explanation of how this works , and he attributes the decision to competitive pressure from Ios, which allows users to deny location data to apps, even if they “require” it during the installation process. I think that’s right, but not the whole story: Android has also always labored under competitive pressure from its free/open forks, like Cyanogenmod. In the days when Android didn’t allow tethering (as a sop to the mobile carriers, who are the gatekeepers to new phones for many people), Cyanogenmod signed up large numbers of users, simply by adding this functionality . Google added tethering to Android within a couple of versions. Some versions of Cyanogenmod have had the option tell your phone to lie to apps about its identity, location, and other sensitive information — a way to get around the “all or nothing” installation process whereby your the apps you install non-negotiably demand your “permission” to plunder this information. I’m not surprised to see the same feature moving into the main branch of Android. This dynamic is fascinating to me: Google has to balance all kinds of priorities in rolling out features and “anti-features” (no tethering, non-negotiable permissions) in Android, in order to please customers, carriers and developers. Free/open forks like Cyanogenmod really only need to please themselves and their users, and don’t have to worry so much about these other pressures (though now that Cyanogenmod is a commercial operation , they’ll probably need to start playing nice with carriers). But because Android competes with Cyanogenmod and the other open versions, Google can’t afford to ignore the featureset that makes them better than the official version. It’s a unique, and extremely beneficial outflow of the hybrid free/commercial Android ecosystem. In the early days, that model was at an improvement on its major competitor, Apple’s iOS, which didn’t even have a permissions model. But after various privacy scandals, Apple started forcing apps to ask for permission to collect data: first location and then other categories, like address books and photos. So for the past two years, the iPhone’s app privacy options have been miles ahead of Android’s. This changed with the release of Android 4.3, which added awesome new OS features to enhance privacy protection. You can unlock this functionality by installing a tool like App Ops Launcher. When you run it, you can easily control most of the privacy-threatening permissions your apps have tried to obtain. Want to install Shazam without having it track your location? Easy. Want to install SideCar without letting it read your address book? Done.2 Despite being overdue and not quite complete, App Ops Launcher is a huge advance in Android privacy. Its availability means Android 4.3+ a necessity for anyone who wants to use the OS while limiting how intrusive those apps can be. The Android team at Google deserves praise for giving users more control of the data that others can snatch from their pockets. Awesome Privacy Tools in Android 4.3+        

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Android gives you the ability to deny your sensitive data to apps

Life from the near future of location surveillance

In Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data , the ACLU’s Jay Stanley presents a slide deck from the near future in which a government intelligence service presents a glowing account of how it convicted “Jack R Benjamin” of DUI pre-crime, by watching all the places he went, all the people he interacted with, and using an algorithm to predict that he would commit a DUI, and, on that basis, to peer into every corner of his personal life. The use of the slide deck is inspired here, echoing as it does the Snowden leaks (Snowden had been tasked with consolidating training documents from across the NSA, which is why he had access to such a wide variety of documents, and why they’re all in powerpoint form). And the kind of data-mining here is not only plausible, it’s likely — it’s hard to imagine cops not availing themselves of this capability. Just out of curiosity, who else has been visiting Mary Smith’s house? Looks like Mary has a few close friends. Wonder if Mr. Benjamin is aware of this Bill Montgomery character who spent a few nights with her? Going back to the main screen, looks like Mr. Benjamin is quite a union activist. Perhaps we should notify George over at BigCorp (he serves at the Fusion Center with us). Just in case our man has been involved in the trouble they’ve been having over there. Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data [Jay Stanley/ACLU] ( via MeFi )        

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Life from the near future of location surveillance

Botnet of 20,000 point-of-sale machines

Details are emerging about Stardust, a piece of malicious software that targets point-of-sale credit-card processing machines. Stardust has reportedly compromised over 20,000 PoS machines and turned them into a easy-to-control botnet. The malware’s masters can monitor the botnet in realtime and issue fine-grained commands to its components, harvesting a titanic volume of payment card details. The discovery comes as researchers from a separate security firm called Arbor Networks published a blog post on Tuesday reporting an active PoS compromise campaign. The advisory is based on two servers found to be hosting Dexter and other PoS malware. Arbor researchers said the campaign looks to be most active in the Eastern Hemisphere. There was no mention of a botnet or of US restaurants or retailers being infected, so the report may be observing a campaign independent from the one found by IntelCrawler. It remains unclear how the attackers manage to initially infect PoS terminals and servers that make up the botnet. In the past, criminals have targeted known vulnerabilities in applications that many sellers of PoS software use to remotely administer customer systems. Weak administrator passwords, a failure to install security updates in a timely fashion, or unknown vulnerabilities in the PoS applications themselves are also possibilities. Credit card fraud comes of age with advances in point-of-sale botnets [Dan Goodin/Ars Technica]        

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Botnet of 20,000 point-of-sale machines

SpaceX completes first mission to geostationary transfer orbit

FALCON 9 SES 8 LAUNCH An announcement from SpaceX today: “Space Exploration Technologies successfully completed its first geostationary transfer mission, delivering the SES-8 satellite to its targeted 295 x 80,000 km orbit. Falcon 9 executed a picture-perfect flight, meeting 100% of mission objectives. Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at 5:41 PM Eastern Time. Approximately 185 seconds into flight, Falcon 9’s second stage’s single Merlin vacuum engine ignited to begin a five minute, 20 second burn that delivered the SES-8 satellite into its parking orbit. Eighteen minutes after injection into the parking orbit, the second stage engine relit for just over one minute to carry the SES-8 satellite to its final geostationary transfer orbit. The restart of the Falcon 9 second stage is a requirement for all geostationary transfer missions. “The successful insertion of the SES-8 satellite confirms the upgraded Falcon 9 launch vehicle delivers to the industry’s highest performance standards,” said Elon Musk, CEO and Chief Designer of SpaceX. “As always, SpaceX remains committed to delivering the safest, most reliable launch vehicles on the market today. We appreciate SES’s early confidence in SpaceX and look forward to launching additional SES satellites in the years to come.” Today’s mission marked SpaceX’s first commercial launch from its central Florida launch pad and the first commercial flight from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in over five years. SpaceX has nearly 50 launches on manifest, of which over 60% are for commercial customers. This launch also marks the second of three certification flights needed to certify the Falcon 9 to fly missions for the U.S. Air Force under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. When Falcon 9 is certified, SpaceX will be eligible to compete for all National Security Space (NSS) missions.        

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SpaceX completes first mission to geostationary transfer orbit

Apps come bundled with secret Bitcoin mining programs, paper over the practice with EULAs

Researchers at Malwarebytes have discovered that some programs covertly install Bitcoin-mining software on users’ computers , papering over the practice by including sneaky language in their license agreements allowing for “computer calculations, security.” The malicious programs include YourFreeProxy from Mutual Public, AKA We Build Toolbars, LLC, AKA WBT. YourFreeProxy comes with a program called Monitor.exe, which repeatedly phones home to WBT, eventually silently downloading and installing a Bitcoin mining program called “jhProtominer.” So now that we have proof that a PUP is installing miners on users systems, do they do it without ever letting the user know? Well not exactly, their EULA specifically covers a section on Computer Calculations: COMPUTER CALCULATIONS, SECURITY: as part of downloading a Mutual Public, your computer may do mathematical calculations for our affiliated networks to confirm transactions and increase security. Any rewards or fees collected by WBT or our affiliates are the sole property of WBT and our affiliates. Their explanation is basically the purpose of Bitcoin Miners and that they will install this software on the system, run it, use up your system resources and finally keep all rewards from the effort YOUR system puts in. Talk about sneaky. In my opinion, PUPs have gone to a new low with the inclusion of this type of scheme, they already collected information on your browsing and purchasing habits with search toolbars and redirectors. They assault users with pop-up ads and unnecessary software to make a buck from their affiliates. Now they are just putting the nails in the coffin by stealing resources and driving user systems to the grave. Potentially Unwanted Miners – Toolbar Peddlers Use Your System To Make BTC [Adam Kujawa/Malwarebytes] ( via /. )        

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Apps come bundled with secret Bitcoin mining programs, paper over the practice with EULAs

New CC licenses: tighter, shorter, more readable, more global

Creative Commons has released version 4.0 of its sharing-friendly, easy-to-use copyright licenses . The new licenses represent a significant improvement over earlier versions. They work in over 60 jurisdictions out of the box, without having to choose different versions depending on which country you’re in; they’re more clearly worded; they eliminate confusion over jurisdiction-specific rights like the European database right and moral rights. They clarify how license users are meant to attribute the works they use; provide for anonymity in license use; and give license users a 30 day window to correct violations, making enforcement simpler. Amazingly, they’re also shorter than the previous licenses, and easier to read, to boot. 30-day window to correct license violations All CC licenses terminate when a licensee breaks their terms, but under 4.0, a licensee’s rights are reinstated automatically if she corrects a breach within 30 days of discovering it. The cure period in version 4.0 resembles similar provisions in a some other public licenses and better reflects how licensors and licensees resolve compliance issues in practice. It also assures users that provided they act promptly, they can continue using the CC-licensed work without worry that they may have lost their rights permanently. Increased readability The 4.0 license suite is decidedly easier to read and understand than prior versions, not to mention much shorter and better organized. The simplified license structure and use of plain language whenever possible increases the likelihood that licensors and reusers will understand their rights and obligations. This improves enforceability of the licenses and reduces confusion and disagreement about how the licenses operate. Clarity about adaptations The BY and BY-NC 4.0 licenses are clearer about how adaptations are to be licensed, a source of confusion for some under the earlier versions of those licenses. These licenses now clarify that you can apply any license to your contributions you want so long as your license doesn’t prevent users of the remix from complying with the original license. While this is how 3.0 and earlier versions are understood, the 4.0 licenses make it abundantly clear and will help remixers in understanding their licensing obligations. What’s New in 4.0        

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New CC licenses: tighter, shorter, more readable, more global