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Hackers who defeated Tunisian censorship promise same for Canada

Apr 242011

The Pirate Party of Canada has threatened to unleash its anti-surveillance software on its own government, promising to let Canadian citizens browse safely under a Virtual Private Network.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/23/0534222/Pirate-Party-of-Canada-Promises-VPN-For-Freedom?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed via Byline

“The Pirate Party of Canada has announced that it will extend a VPN originally set up to allow people in Tunisia to browse freely while internet censorship was imposed there. Canada may soon be added to that list since the ruling Conservative Party has vowed to introduce a bill that would provide unprecedented systematic interception and monitoring of Canadians’ personal communications. So the Pirate Party of Canada has announced it will extend that service to Canadians.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meanwhile, back in north Africa…

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/04/13/1326255/Engineers-Hijack-Libyan-Phone-Network-For-Rebels?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed via Byline

“A team led by a Libyan-American telecom executive has helped rebels hijack Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s cellphone network and re-establish their own communications. The new network, first plotted on an airplane napkin and assembled with the help of oil-rich Arab nations, is giving more than two million Libyans their first connections to each other and the outside world after Col. Gadhafi cut off their telephone and Internet service about a month ago.”

I know where you went for spring break (your iPhone told me)

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Apr 232011

Iphone Tracker Ippolito 2011 01 19 Privacy advocates Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden have released a free visualization tool to demonstrate how the iPhone stores your movements in a file easily accessible by anyone with access to your phone or computer. (Shown here, my January 19th presence in the Philadelphia International Airport.)

Nothing like a good visualization of your own movements to give you the creeps.

Hack someone's car with a malicious tune

News 1 Response »

Apr 022011

Remember that meme going around a few years back where certain dance beats could hack teen brains? Well, apparently it works for cars.

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/03/12/0114219/Hacking-a-Car-With-Music?from=rss via Byline

“Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Washington have identified a handful of ways a hacker could break into a car, including attacks over the car’s Bluetooth and cellular network systems, or through malicious software in the diagnostic tools used in automotive repair shops. But their most interesting attack focused on the car stereo. By adding extra code to a digital music file, they were able to turn a song burned to CD into a Trojan horse. When played on the car’s stereo, this song could alter the firmware of the car’s stereo system, giving attackers an entry point to change other components on the car. This type of attack could be spread on file-sharing networks without arousing suspicion, they believe. ‘It’s hard to think of something more innocuous than a song,’ said Stefan Savage, a professor at the University of California.”

So next time your car doesn’t start or insists on turning right instead of left, blame those tunes you downloaded from Limewire.

In seemingly unrelated news, the music industry is suing Limewire for 75 trillion dollars. I imagine if the RIAA got wind of professor Savage’s research, they would up the number into the quadrillions.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/23/1930238/Limewire-Being-Sued-For-75-Trillion?from=rss via Byline

“13 record companies are trying to sue Limewire for $75 Trillion. The NYC judge in the case thinks it is ‘absurd’. Its almost like these media companies are their worst enemy trying to make themselves look ridiculous. From the article: “The record companies, which had demanded damages ranging from $400 billion to $75 trillion, had argued that Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act provided for damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable. For a popular site like Lime Wire, which had thousands of users and millions of downloads, Wood held that the damage award would be staggering under this interpretation. ‘If plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory predicated on the number of direct infringers per work, defendants’ damages could reach into the trillions,’ she wrote. ‘As defendants note, plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877.’”

What you gonna do when they come for your Internet?

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Mar 052011

Over the past month, new media scholars have spilled a lot of digital ink arguing whether the Internet actually fostered the 2011 revolution in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Middle East countries–or whether it simply created a dependency that governments can shut down to stymie protesters. Here’s a “Middle East Internet Scorecard” showing where and when governments have cut off their citizens’ access to the net.

How hard would it be for, say, President Beck to shut down Google, Facebook, and the like in the US of A? Read this Middle East censorship roundup to find out what Egyptians, Libyans, and the rest of us can do to safeguard access to a global electronic network.

Phone app detects potholes as you drive over them

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Feb 122011

Conspiracy theorists think this app could be used to detect drivers who pick up the phone to text, which is illegal on some states. But given the size of Maine’s potholes, it could also help locate cars that have disappeared into them.

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/02/10/0235239/Gov-App-Detects-Potholes-As-Your-Drive-Over-Them?from=rss via Byline An anonymous reader writes “The City of Boston has released an app that uses the accelerometer in your smartphone to automatically report bumps in the road as you drive over them. From the article: ‘The application relies on two components embedded in iPhones, Android phones, and many other mobile devices: the accelerometer and the Global Positioning System receiver. The accelerometer, which determines the direction and acceleration of a phone’s movement, can be harnessed to identify when a phone resting on a dashboard or in a cupholder in a moving car has hit a bump; the GPS receiver can determine by satellite just where that bump is located.’ I am certain that this will not be used to track your movements, unless they are vertical.”

Facebook beats upstart Tunisia for title of worst privacy menace

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Feb 012011

In January Facebook staff realized that the Tunisian government had installed software that tracked its citizens in unconscionable ways. Fortunately Facebook has now repaired that glaring security hole, and returned to its usual routine of tracking its own users in unconscionable ways. Like putting your face on Starbucks ads without your permission.

Even single-celled organisms can be farmers

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Jan 232011

Just when you thought slime molds, which alternate between individual and collective organisms, couldn’t get any weirder.

If amoebas can grow their own food, you have even less of an excuse for not doing so yourself. And no, Farmville doesn’t count.

Slime Molds Are Earth’s Smallest, Oldest Farmers http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/7UzmakhSZzY/ via Byline Colonies of a bizarre microbial goo have been found practicing agriculture at a scale tinier than any seen before….

When food is short, hundreds of thousands of amoebas come together, fusing into a single entity. It may crawl off as a slug in search of richer pastures, then form a stalk topped by a “fruiting body” that bursts to disperse a few lucky amoebas-turned-spores. Or it may form the stalk right away, without crawling.

It’s been thought that slime molds simply scavenge, eating bacteria they like and oozing out the rest. In laboratories, researchers “cure” slime molds of their bacteria by allowing them to purge themselves on Petri dishes. But Brock, who studies how slime-mold cells communicate and self-organize, kept finding bacteria in the fruiting bodies of some slime molds and not others….

They found that some strains didn’t gorge themselves and “lick the plate clean” of bacteria, but instead saved some inside of the colony. They were farmers, and fared better in some soils than their nonfarming counterparts.

From the original article:

“The behavior falls short of the kind of ‘farming’ that more advanced animals do; ants, for example, nurture a single fungus species that no longer exists in the wild. But the idea that an amoeba that spends much of its life as a single-celled organism could hold short of consuming a food supply before decamping is an astonishing one. More than just a snack for the journey of dispersal, the idea is that the bacteria that travel with the spores can ‘seed’ a new bacterial colony, and thus a food source in case the new locale should be lacking in bacteria.”

Is that a suicide note on your Facebook page, or is your bot just happy to see me?

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Jan 212011

Just when you thought it was safe to use a Mac. Well, I guess it’s still pretty safe if you don’t click on that suspicious Facebook link.

Java: write once, spam everywhere.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/19/mac_linux_bot_vulnerabilities/

(via Bruce Sterling)

“The bot was discovered spreading over Facebook posts that planted the following message on infected users’ Facebook pages: “As you are on my friends list I thought I would let you know I have decided to end my life.” An included link leads recipients to a cross-platform JAR, or Java Archive file that can run on Windows, Mac, or Linux. Once the recipient is infected, his Facebook page carries the same dire warning.”

“Known as Trojan.Jnanabot, or alternately as OSX/Koobface.A or trojan.osx.boonana.a, the bot made waves in October when researchers discovered its Java-based makeup allowed it to attack Mac and Linux machines, not just Windows PCs as is the case with most malware. Once installed, the trojan components are stored in an invisible folder and use strong encryption to keep communications private.

“The bot can force its host to take instructions through internet relay chat, perform DDoS attacks, and post fraudulent messages to the victim’s Facebook account, among other things….”

Biggest music pirates? The record labels

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Jan 202011

Record labels agree to settle a class-action lawsuit by paying songwriters $47.5 million for tracks the labels themselves pirated. Oh, and Sony et al. didn’t make the 300,000 copyrighted songs (which they didn’t own) freely available on a filesharing network–they *sold* them.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/01/11/0615258/Record-Labels-To-Pay-For-Copyright-Infringement?from=rss via Byline “Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., EMI Music Canada Inc., Universal Music Canada Inc. and Warner Music Canada Co. have agreed to pay songwriters and music publishers $47.5 million in damages for copyright infringement and overdue royalties to settle a class action lawsuit. ‘The 2008 class action alleges that the record companies “exploited” music owners by reproducing and selling in excess of 300,000 song titles without securing licenses from the copyright owners and/or without paying the associated royalty payments. The record companies knowingly did so and kept a so-called “pending list” of unlicensed reproductions, setting aside $50 million for the issue, if it ever arose, court filings suggest.’”

Not to be outdone, Microsoft is trying to patent the idea of a “fan.”

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/01/07/2130218/Microsoft-Lays-Claim-To-Patent-On-Fans?from=rss via Byline theodp writes “A USPTO filing made public Thursday reveals that Microsoft is seeking a patent for something it calls ‘One-Way Public Relationships’ in social networks and other online properties, lawyer-speak for what’s more commonly known as being a ‘fan’ of something online. It’s unclear whether it’s a goof on Apple, but Microsoft curiously used the example of a U2 fan named Steve to explain its ‘invention’ to the USPTO. Purported patent reformer Microsoft, which has called for the US to change from a first-to-invent patent system to a first-to-file system, filed the patent application in July 2009. Microsoft is a partner with and investor in Facebook, which first established its fan pages back in November 2007.”

Maybe these old media companies should be looking at newer, “free-to-play” business models.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/01/07/2220228/emLotR-Onlinesem-Free-To-Play-Switch-Tripled-Revenue?from=rss via Byline Last June, Turbine made the decision to switch Lord of the Rings Online from a subscription-based business model to a free-to-play model supported by microtransactions. In a podcast interview with Ten Ton Hammer, Turbine executives revealed that the switch has gone well for the company, with game revenues roughly tripling. The active player base has also grown significantly in that time. Executive Producer Kate Paiz said, “This really echoes a lot of what we’ve seen throughout the entertainment industry in general. It’s really about letting players make their choices about how they play.”

Are harder lessons more memorable?

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Jan 192011

If this research is to be believed, your professor’s ugly PowerPoint fonts make you more likely to remember his lectures, and you’re gonna forget that book you read on your Kindle or iPad because the screen is too crisp.

Is the takeaway that good graphic design leads to bad education? Or is it that anything that gets students to participate more actively–even if only to squint their eyes–stimulates learning more than passive edutainment?

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/JYXsb_CnfUQ/ via Byline When students read books printed in hard-to-read fonts like Comic Sans, they retain information from them better than material printed in traditional fonts.

Meanwhile, on Slashdot:

http://idle.slashdot.org/story/11/01/14/1527207/Research-Suggests-E-Readers-Are-Too-Easy-To-Read?from=rss via Byline New research suggests that the clear screens and easily read fonts of e-readers makes your brain “lazy.” According to Neuroscience blogger Jonah Lehrer, using electronic books like the Kindle and Sony Reader makes you less likely to remember what you have read because the devices are so easy on the eyes. From the article: “Rather than making things clearer, e-readers and computers prevent us from absorbing information because their crisp screens and fonts tell our subconscious that the words they convey are not important, it is claimed. In contrast, handwriting and fonts that are more challenging to read signal to the brain that the content of the message is important and worth remembering, experts say.”

Communism sponsors capitalism?

Fail 1 Response »

Jan 122011

Ever wonder how our failing economy is staying afloat?

China is lending US gov’t money…because we gave that money to our failing banks who have used that money to pay lobbyists to stop the government from regulating their actions. Puzzled? Check out common sense economist Richard Wolff as he explains Why the Economic Crisis Deepens

Man's real-life Frogger skills no match for oncoming SUV

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Jan 112011

Some people will do anything to pass NMD102. At least when Variable Media students recreated Pacman in the university parking lot, no one ended up in the hospital

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/12/29/2312254/Real-Life-emFroggerem-Ends-In-Hospital-Visit?from=rss

BigSes writes “A 23-year old man has been hospitalized after police in South Carolina say he was hit by an SUV while playing a real-life version of the video game Frogger. Authorities said the 23-year-old man was taken to a hospital in Anderson after he was struck Monday evening. Before he was hit, police say the man had been discussing the game with his friends. Chief Jimmy Dixon says the man yelled ‘go’ and darted into oncoming traffic in the four-lane highway. Has it come time to ban some of the classics before someone else goes out and breaks a few bricks with their heads after eating a large mushroom?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook face-recognition: a haar-raising prospect

News 2 Responses »

Dec 052010

Kinect eye-view Facebook quietly rolled out face recognition in its photo service earlier this year, prompting some to speculate that Facebook users might soon get ads correlated to what they look like or where their pictures appear. But Facebook may not be the only one targeting ads according to what the lens sees. Last month Microsoft’s Chief Financial Officer for interactive entertainment let slip that Kinect’s camera feed offered his company “a bunch of new business opportunities.”

What sort of business opportunities? Well, once their system is trained on actual faces thanks to tags from its own users, Microsoft or Facebook could sell Haar classifiers to other companies for ad targeting (think X-box ads for acne cream) or the government for surveillance (think a “Total Information Awareness” database of every person ever caught on a security camera).

Of course, as new media artist and innovator Mark Daggett pointed out to me, this face-harvesting could have productive applications, such as an iPhone app that scans a crowd and displays each person’s Facebook profile above their heads. Then again, it could have detrimental applications, such as an iPhone app that scans a crowd and displays each person’s Facebook profile above their heads.

Why pushing the elevator's "close door" button doesn't do squat

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Nov 142010

Turns out the placebo effect isn’t just for drugs. It apparently works for elevators, thermostats, and walk buttons at intersections–most of which don’t work and aren’t even intended to! Oh, and turns out in addition to his other firsts, John Cage may have created the first placebo music.

Six-year-olds and other recent victims of copyright

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Nov 072010

Six-year-olds can be sued, lawyers pirate each other, Apple’s App Store won’t accept GPL’d software, and yet another jury awarded the RIAA huge damages against filesharer Jammie Thomas. But at least the US government no longer thinks genes should be patented.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/10/30/1435222/New-York-Judge-Rules-6-Year-Old-Can-Be-Sued

“A girl can be sued over accusations she ran over an elderly woman with her training bicycle when she was 4 years old, a New York Supreme Court justice has ruled. The ruling by King’s County Supreme Court Justice Paul Wooten stems from an incident in April 2009 when Juliet Breitman and Jacob Kohn, both aged four, struck an 87-year-old pedestrian, Claire Menagh, with their training bikes. Menagh underwent surgery for a fractured hip and died three months later. In a ruling made public late Thursday, the judge dismissed arguments by Breitman’s lawyer that the case should be dismissed because of her young age. He ruled that she is old enough to be sued and the case can proceed.”

Meanwhile, the App Store restrictions irk makers of popular video player VLC:

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/10/31/1351243/VLC-Developer-Takes-a-Stand-Against-DRM-Enforcement

“The GPL gives Apple permission to distribute this software through the App Store. All they would have to do is follow the license’s conditions to help keep the software free. Instead, Apple has decided that they prefer to impose Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and proprietary legal terms on all programs in the App Store, and they’d rather kick out GPLed software than change their own rules.”

And those anti-piracy lawyers turn out to be pirating each other. http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/10/10/03/2135202/Anti-Piracy-Lawyers-Caught-Pirating-Each-Other

“We would like to think that the lawyers that are prosecuting alleged copyright infringers are practicing what they preach, but it looks like one of the most high profile firms involved in such cases are just as guilty of stealing others’ work as those who are downloading illegal media.” The Obama administration makes a 180 on patenting genes.

http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/10/30/1140235/US-Says-Genes-Should-Not-Be-Patentable

Geoffrey.landis writes “A friend-of-the-court brief filed by the US Department of Justice says that genes should not be patentable. ‘We acknowledge that this conclusion is contrary to the longstanding practice of the Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the practice of the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies that have in the past sought and obtained patents for isolated genomic DNA,’ they wrote (PDF). The argument that genes in themselves (as opposed to, say, tests made from genetic information, or drugs that act on proteins made by genes) should be patentable is that ‘genes isolated from the body are chemicals that are different from those found in the body’ and therefore are eligible for patents. This argument is, of course, completely silly, and apparently the US government may now actually realize that.”

Nicaragua accidentally invades Costa Rica, thanks ro Google Maps

News No Responses »

Nov 062010

This may be the most embarrassing technology-related accident since the owner of Segway died by riding one of his company’s scooters off a cliff and into a river.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/11/05/1158254/Nicaragua-Raids-Costa-Rica-Blames-Google-Maps

“An error on Google Maps has caused an international conflict in Central America. A Nicaraguan military commander, relying on Google Maps, moved troops into an area near San Juan Lake along the border between his country and Costa Rica (Google translation of Spanish original). The troops are accused of setting up camp there, taking down a Costa Rican flag and raising the Nicaraguan flag, doing work to clean up a nearby river, and dumping the sediment in Costa Rican territory.”

Facebook = teh bad

News 1 Response »

Oct 192010

We’ve probably all heard about this already, but it’s certainly apt, so here it is. Facebook apps (such as Farmville) have been giving (inadvertently or not) non-anonymous personal information to advertisers, a violation of Facebook’s privacy policy. So basically, you could have chosen the most restrictive privacy settings on Facebook, but if you used Farmville (or if one of your “friends” used Farmville) or one of the other offending apps, your info (your Facebook ID) could have been leaked. I think it’s kind of vague right now as to exactly what was leaked and why it happened, but any way you slice it, privacy was violated; and that’s another strike for Mr. Zuckerberg, the first being the leaked ims from 2004. Good thing none of us would be caught dead using as passe a piece of software as Facebook. Right? Metaphor: Facebook is to the year 2010, as AOL was to the year 2001.

Older Entries

Hack someone's car with a malicious tune

Phone app detects potholes as you drive over them

Is that a suicide note on your Facebook page, or is your bot just happy to see me?

Are harder lessons more memorable?

Communism sponsors capitalism?

Man's real-life Frogger skills no match for oncoming SUV

Why pushing the elevator's "close door" button doesn't do squat

Nicaragua accidentally invades Costa Rica, thanks ro Google Maps

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