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Submission + - SPAM: Court rules Facebook can be liable for sex trafficking recruitment

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday in a Houston case that Facebook is not a “lawless no-man’s-land” and can be held liable for the conduct of pimps who use its technology to recruit and prey on children.

The ruling came in a trio of Houston civil actions involving teenage trafficking victims who met their abusive pimps through Facebook’s messaging functions. They sued the California-based social media juggernaut for negligence and product liability, saying that Facebook failed to warn about or attempt to prevent sex trafficking from taking place on its internet platforms. The suits also alleged that Facebook benefited from the sexual exploitation of trafficking victims.

“Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing, and the federal precedent uniformly dictates that Section 230 does not allow it,” the opinion said. “Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.”
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Mailchimp Suspends The Babylon Bee For "Harmful Information"

Submitted by tobiah
tobiah writes: In the latest act of censorship by Big Tech against conservative satire site The Babylon Bee, Mailchimp suspended their (paid) account for "Harmful Information". After complaints it was reinstated, although Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon stated via Twitter that they would finding another service provider. Notably Twitter has previously suspended The Babylon Bee's account, and facebook appears intent on doing the same. The New York Times recently issued a correction under legal threat, stating that The Babylon Bee Is a ‘Satirical Website’ and not ‘Misinformation’.

Submission + - Dell SupportAssist bugs put over 30 million PCs at risk (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Security researchers have found four major security vulnerabilities in the BIOSConnect feature of Dell SupportAssist, allowing attackers to remotely execute code within the BIOS of impacted devices.

According to Dell's website, the SupportAssist software is "preinstalled on most Dell devices running Windows operating system," while BIOSConnect provides remote firmware update and OS recovery features.

The chain of flaws discovered by Eclypsium researchers comes with a CVSS base score of 8.3/10 and enables privileged remote attackers to impersonate Dell.com and take control of the target device's boot process to break OS-level security controls.

Submission + - Freenode launches IRC.com, a 'modernized' approach to IRC (freenode.org) 1

Submitted by devphaeton
devphaeton writes: Freenode's new web apps make IRCv3 accessible with modern, social media-like applications. From the freenode.org website:

1 score and a little over 2 years ago, IRC was created by the great and honorable Jarkko Oikarinen. It's had its ups and downs, from the era of net splits to the era of cancel culture. However, we're proud to announce that we've completely obliterated the swamp removing the shackles on progress, and now we're sailing blue seas. YaRR!

The freenode digital autonomous zone is proud to announce IRC.com by freenode. In addition to our FOSS and free IRC bouncer service that keeps you connected 24/7, we now provide Android and iOS applications that connect to our freenode bouncer, enabling push notifications, avatars and a whole other suite of IRCv3 capabilities!

Now that IRC is up to speed with modern messaging clients, we're now aiming to take things further yet. IRC is a much more robust and useable messaging platform than anything else out there. We're just getting started.

Regardless of your stance on the recent freenode/libera drama, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Will this destroy IRC like google groups did to Usenet, or will it be a boon for an antiquated technology that's still around but slipping?

Submission + - Twitter loses Intermediary status in India

Submitted by raorajesh
raorajesh writes: Twitter has lost its Intermediary status after it failed to comply with recently revised Information Technology regulations by the Indian government. Twitter failed to appoint a full-time officer in charge of compliance in India, its country managing director will be criminally liable for inflammatory or hateful remarks on the platform. The first case in which Twitter can face charges for third party content was filed on Tuesday in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in connection with an alleged assault on an elderly Muslim man on June 5.


Losing Intermediary status means that it will be seen as a publisher of all content on its platform. Twitter will now be open to lawsuits and legal proceedings for content. Twitter representatives on Friday appeared before a bipartisan parliamentary panel that had called the social media company to discuss the issue of safeguarding citizens' rights and preventing misuse of online platforms.. Twitter grilled by MPs over violating new IT Rules

Twitter has 17.5 Million users in India.

Total number of internet users in India is about 750 Million in 2021 and projected to grow to nearly a Billion by 2025

Submission + - NVIDIA Rumored to be Adopting Intel's Anti-competitive Exclusivity Strategy (notebookcheck.net)

Submitted by Neuroelectronic
Neuroelectronic writes: A user on Twitter seems to have insider information on NVIDIA's China-exclusive GeForce Partner Program:

OEMs need supply from AMD/NVIDIA, and NVIDIA mobile GPU sells (that's a fact). And they get rebates from AMD/NVIDIA for higher margin and lower cost. Mobile GPP is about giving OEMs a lot of rebates that making NVIDIA GPUs will simply make them more money. Mobile GPP forces OEM to make less to none AMD GPU laptops in exchange for that sweet sweet rebate. Of course if you go the other way you lose that. And unfortunately RDNA2 isn't enough in terms of volume to make up the loss.

Sum it up: NVIDIA doing GPP again in China, hijacking OEMs so making RDNA2 laptop designs will lose rebates and supply, resulting them making much less money. OEMs are forced to kneel down before NVIDIA. Basically anti-competitive but you can't sue them because region specific.

Submission + - US National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded Wuhan research that created Covid (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by aberglas
aberglas writes: In https://thebulletin.org/2021/0... Nicholas Wade soberly reviews the research that was conducted by the Wuhan virology institute prior to the outbreak of Covid-19. Much of this is public as it was funded by a US NIH grant and the Wuhan Institute proudly described their research in academic publications. An open attempt to create super viruses so that they could be studied in the lab and so prepare for any possible natural outbreak.

Wade takes care not to draw conclusions, but the conclusion is obvious. They were exactly trying to enhance the spike protein on a SARS virus. They were working at Biosecurity level 2 instead of the much more painful level 4. And if it was natural then there would be animal precursors, yet none have been found.

Wade speculates that the international virologist community does not want their research to be brought into disrepute, and so actively tried to play down any talk of an accident. The NIH and Chinese governments certainly did not want it publicized. And the Trump buffoonery meant that many left leaning publications discounted the theory.

This is important, because it raises the question as to whether such research should be conducted in the first place.

Submission + - Crypto-mining gangs are running amok on free cloud computing platforms (therecord.media)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over the course of the last few months, some crypto-mining gangs have switched their modus operandi from attacking and hijacking unpatched servers to abusing the free tiers of cloud computing platforms. Gangs have been operating by registering accounts on selected platforms, signing up for a free tier, and running a cryptocurrency mining app on the provider’s free tier infrastructure. After trial periods or free credits reach their limits, the groups register a new account and start from the first step, keeping the provider’s servers at their upper usage limit and slowing down their normal operations.

The list of services that have been abused this way includes the likes of GitHub, GitLab, TravisCI, LayerCI, CircleCI, Render, CloudBees CodeShip, Sourcehut, and Okteto.

Submission + - Tech Giants Supporting Code.org's Amazon-Bankrolled Java-Based AP CS Curriculum

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Code.org on Wednesday announced that dozens of industry, education, and state leaders are supporting a new Code.org AP CS A Java-focused curriculum for high school students, which will be available at no charge to all schools starting in the 2022–23 school year. "We are proud to have the following companies on our Industry Advisory Panel: @Adobe @amazon @Atlassian @Disney @EpicGames @GoldmanSachs @Google @IBM @instagram @microsoft @riotgames @Roblox @Snapchat @Spotify @Tesla @unity3d @Vista_Equity," Code.org tweeted. "A big thank you to the following colleges and universities on our Education Advisory Panel: @BowieState @UBuffalo @CarnegieMellon @Harvard @montgomerycoll @NCWIT @thisisUIC @Illinois_Alma @unlv @UNOmaha @SpelmanCollege @UT_Dallas @UW @westminsterpa." In an accompanying Medium post, Code.org explained: "This work is all made possible through a generous [$15 million] gift from Amazon Future Engineer."

Despite having the support of some of the world's richest corporations and individuals whose goals the nonprofit helps advance, recently-released SBA records show that Code.org applied for and was approved for its second forgivable Federal Paycheck Protection Program loan in the amount of $1.9 million dollars on March 25, a month after Amazon and Code.org issued a joint press release announcing their $15 million plan to work on a new AP CS A curriculum and other initiatives. Amazon certainly has ambitious plans for influencing K-12 CS education. Last week, the company announced a 2021 goal to "reach 1.6 million underrepresented students globally through Amazon Future Engineer with real world-inspired virtual and hands-on computer science project learning." And an Amazon Future Engineer job listing for a U.S. Country Senior Manager notes the job will require working "with national and local educational non-profits and governmental entities such as BootUp, Project STEM, Code.org, and the US and State Departments of Education," as well as positioning Amazon "as subject matter experts on US computer science education, as well as the local education systems of our headquarter regions."

Submission + - Libreboot, others, form a campaign to defend Richard Stallman (libreboot.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Leah Rowe, the project leader at Libreboot, has published a lengthy rebuttal of what she calls a smear campaign against the Free Software activist Richard Stallman. Leah joins the ranks of other bloggers around the web, who take apart the "cancel culture" used against him, post blow-by-blow refuttals of the accusations posed against Stallman and call for justice in the way he is being treated. The open letter in his support has collected more than 4500 signatures by now.

Submission + - Gopher, Gemini, and the Rise of the Small Internet 2

Submitted by lee1
lee1 writes: The danger and irritations of the modern web have unleashed a movement dedicated to creating a safer and simpler alternative. The old Gopher network and the new Gemini protocol have emerged as building blocks for this new "small Internet."

Submission + - Has all of RSA Encryption just been Broken? 2

Submitted by heretic108
heretic108 writes: If a recent paper by German mathematician and cryptographer Claus P. Schnorr is true, then it would appear that Schnorr has just broken the entire RSA cryptosystem, by drastically reducing the computational effort to factor integers as large as 2^800 to just 10billion arithmetic operations, well within the reach of even modest desktop computers.

Submission + - Linux Mint team wants users to upgrade, may enforce some (ghacks.net)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Last month, the Linux Mint team published a post on the organization's official blog about the importance of installing security updates on machines running the Linux distribution. The essence of the post was that a sizeable number of Linux Mint devices was running outdated applications, packages or even an outdated version of the operating system itself. A sizeable number of devices run on Linux Mint 17.x, according to the blog post, a version of Linux Mint that reached end of support in April 2019. A new blog post, published yesterday, provides information on how the team plans to reduce the update reluctance of Linux Mint users. Next to showing reminders to users, Linux Mint's Update Manager may enforce some of the updates according to the blog post.

"In some cases the Update Manager will be able to remind you to apply updates. In a few of them it might even insist." Upcoming versions will provide information on the implementation, how the "insisting" part may look like, and whether the installation of updates will be enforced. All of this boils down to a single question: how far should operating system developers go when it comes to updates?

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