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Submission + - Leading the Computer Revolution in a Totalitarian State

Submitted by szczys
szczys writes: How do you enter the information age when computers, and the components that go into them, are embargoed by other countries and imports of any value are restricted by your own? This and a myriad of other barriers didn't stop Voja Antonic from building his own computers and teaching others how to do so during the 70's, 80's, 90's, and beyond.

He managed to get a TRS-80 into Yugoslavia by having a friend cut the cables between the two boards and send them separately to avoid getting caught in customs. He bootstrapped his own personal computer and published the plans in the country's first computer magazine. It was built by over 8000 people. Check out these stories and his experience of living in the Eastern Bloc and through the war in '90s, all while continuing to build and promote computers in what is now Serbia.

http://hackaday.com/2015/08/03...

Submission + - "Happy Birthday" Public Domain after all? (techdirt.com)

Submitted by jazzdude00021
jazzdude00021 writes: No song has had as contentious of copyright history as "Happy Birthday." The song is nearly ubiquitous at birthday parties in the USA, and even has several translations with the same tune. Due to copyrights held by Warner Music, public performances have historically commanded royalty fees. However, a new lawsuit has been brought to prove that "Happy Birthday" is, and always has been in the public domain.The discovery phase for this lawsuit ended on July, 11 2014, yet this past week new evidence surfaced from Warner Music that may substantiate the claim that the lyrics were in the public domain long before the copyright laws changed in 1927. From the source:

And, here's the real kicker: they discovered this bit of evidence after two questionable things happened. (1) Warner/Chappell Music (who claims to hold the copyright for the publishing, if it exists) suddenly "found" a bunch of relevant documents that it was supposed to hand over in discovery last year, but didn't until just a few weeks ago, and (2) a rather important bit of information in one of those new documents was somewhat bizarrely "blurred out." This led the plaintiffs go searching for the original, and discover that it undermines Warner Music's arguments, to the point of showing that the company was almost certainly misleading the court. Furthermore, it definitively shows that the work was and is in the public domain.

Submission + - Kentucky Man shoots drone that was hovering over sunbathing 16-year old girl (wdrb.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Hillview, Kentucky resident William H. Merideth describes his Sunday afternoon: "Sunday afternoon, the kids – my girls – were out on the back deck, and the neighbors were out in their yard," Merideth said. "And they come in and said, 'Dad, there’s a drone out here, flying over everybody’s yard.'"

Merideth's neighbors saw it too. "It was just hovering above our house and it stayed for a few moments and then she finally waved and it took off," said neighbor Kim VanMeter. VanMeter has a 16-year-old daughter who lays out at their pool. She says a drone hovering with a camera is creepy and weird. "I just think you should have privacy in your own backyard," she said.

Merideth agrees and said he had to go see for himself. “Well, I came out and it was down by the neighbor’s house, about 10 feet off the ground, looking under their canopy that they’ve got under their back yard," Merideth said. "I went and got my shotgun and I said, ‘I’m not going to do anything unless it’s directly over my property.’"

That moment soon arrived, he said. "Within a minute or so, here it came," he said. "It was hovering over top of my property, and I shot it out of the sky. I didn't shoot across the road, I didn't shoot across my neighbor's fences, I shot directly into the air."

It wasn't long before the drone's owners appeared. "Four guys came over to confront me about it, and I happened to be armed, so that changed their minds," Merideth said. "They asked me, 'Are you the S-O-B that shot my drone?' and I said, 'Yes I am,'" he said. "I had my 40mm Glock on me and they started toward me and I told them, 'If you cross my sidewalk, there's gonna be another shooting.'"

A short time later, Merideth said the police arrived. "There were some words exchanged there about my weapon, and I was open carry – it was completely legal," he said. "Long story short, after that, they took me to jail for wanton endangerment first degree and criminal mischief...because I fired the shotgun into the air."

Submission + - Republican presidential candidates cluster accounts at bank with only 1 branch i (bluecheddar.net)

Submitted by philadelphiaplumber9
philadelphiaplumber9 writes: Hmmmmm. From Bloomberg: According to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, Chain Bridge is the sole bank serving Jeb Bushâ(TM)s presidential campaign, which reported raising $11.4âmillion as of June 30, and his allied super-PAC, Right to Rise, which says itâ(TM)s raised $103 million so far. Donald Trumpâ(TM)s campaign banks at Chain Bridge, and itâ(TM)s more Â

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Visit bluecheddar.net for more news and opinion. You can contact blue cheddar through twitter or facebook. Blue Cheddar is a progressive blog in Wisconsin.
Spam

Gmail Spam Filter Changes Bite Linus Torvalds 136

Posted by timothy from the managing-by-remote dept.
An anonymous reader points out The Register's story that recent changes to the spam filters that Google uses to pare down junk in gmail evidently are a bit overzealous. Linus Torvalds, who famously likes to manage by email, and whose email flow includes a lot of mailing lists, isn't happy with it. Ironically perhaps, it was only last week that the Gmail team blogged that its spam filter's rate of false positives is down to less than 0.05 per cent. In his post, Torvalds said his own experience belies that claim, and that around 30 per cent of the mail in his spam box turned out not to be spam. "It's actually at the point where I'm noticing missing messages in the email conversations I see, because Gmail has been marking emails in the middle of the conversation as spam. Things that people replied to and that contained patches and problem descriptions," Torvalds wrote.
Transportation

Remote Exploit On a Production Chrysler To Be Presented At BlackHat 173

Posted by timothy from the just-wait-for-full-steer-by-wire dept.
Matt_Bennett writes: A scary remote exploit is going to be published that enables someone connected to the the same wireless (mobile data) network to take over many [automobile] systems, including braking. This is an exploit in Chrysler's Uconnect system. Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek also demonstrated exploits in 2013 that could be done via a direct connection to the system, but this is vastly expanded in scope. The pair convinced Wired writer Andy Greenberg to drive around near St. Louis while they picked apart the car's systems from 10 miles away, killing the radio controls before moving on to things like the transmission.

Submission + - IBM Posts 13th Consecutive Quarterly Revenue Drop (time.com)

Submitted by Virtucon
Virtucon writes: Despite selling off and giving away business units and making "strategic investments", IBM continues to slide in revenue generation. Quarterly revenue is down 13.5% vs. same quarter last year. And surprise, they have no details on how they'll turn it around

IBM CFO Martin Schroeter did his best to reassure investors on a call that IBM is on the right track as it invests into areas that the company feels will one day generate high returns. Schroeter didn’t give any concrete details on how IBM’s “strategic imperatives” are currently contributing to the company’s bottom line.

Submission + - Remote exploit on a production vehicle to be presented at BlackHat (wired.com)

Submitted by Matt_Bennett
Matt_Bennett writes: A scary remote exploit is going to be published that enables someone connected to the the same wireless (mobile data) network to take over many systems, including braking. This is an exploit in Chrysler's Uconnect system. Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek also demonstrated exploits in 2013 that could be done via a direct connection to the system, but this is vastly expanded in scope.
Privacy

Red Star Linux Adds Secret Watermarks To Files 100

Posted by timothy from the but-it's-open-source dept.
An anonymous reader writes: ERNW security analyst Florian Grunow says that North Korea's Red Star Linux operating system is tracking users by tagging content with unique hidden tags. He particularizes that files including Word documents and JPEG images connected to but not necessarily executed in Red Star will have a tag introduced into its code that includes a number based on hardware serial numbers. Red Star's development team seems to have created some quite interesting custom additions to Linux kernel and userspace, based on which Grunow has written a technical analysis.

Submission + - Massless particle discovery could radically accelerate electronics (gizmag.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An exotic particle theorized more than 85 years ago has finally been discovered. Dubbed the "Weyl fermion", it is a strange but stable particle that has no mass, behaves as both matter and anti-matter inside a crystal, and is claimed to be able to create completely massless electrons. Scientists believe that this new particle may result in super-fast electronics and significant inroads into novel areas of quantum computing.

There are two types of particles that make up the universe and everything in it: fermions and bosons. In simple terms, fermions are all the particles that make up matter (for example, electrons), and bosons are all the particles that carry force (for example, photons). Ordinarily, fermions such as electrons can collide with each other, losing energy, and no two fermions can share the same state at the same position at the same time. Weyl fermions being massless, however, have no such restrictions.

Submission + - Grooveshark co-founder Josh Greenberg dead at 28 (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: The tech startup world has been shaken today by news that 28-year-old Josh Greenberg, co-founder of recently defunct music sharing service Grooveshark, was found dead on Sunday in the Florida apartment he shared with his girlfriend. No foul play is suspected, but the local medical examiner is conducting an autopsy, according to the Gainesville Sun. Grooveshark was shut down in April after the company was threatened with legal action and possibly hundreds of millions in damages by several big music labels.
Security

Netragard Ends Exploit Acquisition Program After Hacking Team Breach 48

Posted by samzenpus from the Netragard-Ends-Exploit-Acquisition-Program dept.
Trailrunner7 writes: After the fallout from the HackingTeam breach, Netragard, a company that buys and sells exploits, has decided to shut down its exploit acquisition program. Leaked documents show that Natragard was selling exploits to the Italian maker of intrusion and surveillance software. In addition, documents further showed that the company sold its products to a variety of oppressive regimes, including Egypt and Ethiopia. A company statement reads in part: "We’ve decided to terminate our Exploit Acquisition Program (again). Our motivation for termination revolves around ethics, politics, and our primary business focus. The HackingTeam breach proved that we could not sufficiently vet the ethics and intentions of new buyers. HackingTeam unbeknownst to us until after their breach was clearly selling their technology to questionable parties, including but not limited to parties known for human rights violations. While it is not a vendors responsibility to control what a buyer does with the acquired product, HackingTeam’s exposed customer list is unacceptable to us. The ethics of that are appalling and we want nothing to do with it."

Submission + - Cuban traffic has shifted from satellite to undersea cable

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes: Nearly all of Cuba's international traffic is now routed over the ALBA-1 undersea cable, which connects Cuba and Venezula. The cable landing is at the east end of the island, so there must be a backbone connecting major cities to it. Huawei is installing home DSL and WiFi hotspotsi in Cuba — have they also installed an inter-province backbone?

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