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Comment Re:Read the fine print (Score 1) 138

by Veretax (#62535126) Attached to: Elon Musk Says Twitter Deal 'Temporarily On Hold Over Spam'
The problem with that percentage, is the strange changes (and lack of changes) after Musk's bid to take over the company was made. Many left leaning users lost users, some right leaning ones gained, but there, to my knowledge didn't appear to be a huge increase in actual people. Leading some to conclude that the 5% figure might be larger, if you didn't include all the people who have been censored. I don't know what the real truth is, but it certainly makes sense to slow down if you think something shady is going on. I can't knock Elon Musk for that. (Even if he is a bit naive and full of himself at times)

Submission + - SPAM: TV Wall Mount Full Motion

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Rynas world offers the tv wall mount full motion is a fixed wall mount for most 19” to 60” flat panel displays up to 77 pounds.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Hawley introducing measure to strip Disney of copyright protections (thehill.com) 1

Submitted by jcdick1
jcdick1 writes: Senator Josh Hawley (R)-MO introduced legislation — the Copyright Clause Restoration Act — on Tuesday that would reduce copyright from its current "Life plus ..." period to a mere 28 years, with a single 28 year extension, if applied for. This would be made retroactive. It would only apply to copyright holders with a market cap of $150,000,000,000 or more. His argument is that allowing large "woke" media corporations to continue to hold out on the common good is a huge corporate handout by government. From the article:

“Thanks to special copyright protections from Congress, woke corporations like Disney have earned billions while increasingly pandering to woke activists,” Hawley said in a statement. “It’s time to take away Disney’s special privileges and open up a new era of creativity and innovation.”

Submission + - UK, US, and EU Officially Blame Russia For Cyberattack Targeting Viasat (sky.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The UK, US and EU have formally accused Russia of being behind a cyber attack targeting a satellite communications network used in Ukraine. Businesses and individuals using routers made by Viasat, an American business that provides broadband-speed satellite internet connections, were knocked offline just before tanks began to roll into the country.

"The cyberattack took place one hour before Russia's unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, thus facilitating the military aggression," the EU said in its statement. "Although the primary target is believed to have been the Ukrainian military, other customers were affected, including personal and commercial internet users," the Foreign Office added. As a result of the attack 5,800 wind turbines in Germany were knocked offline as they depended upon Viasat routers for remote monitoring and control. The company said in total tens of thousands of its terminals were effectively destroyed and needed to be replaced.

Submission + - EV Automaker Hailed As The 'Next Tesla' Is Hemorrhaging Cash And Investors (dailycaller.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Rivian's stock price fell 18.72% to $23.40 per share on Monday, a whopping 87% decline from its November peak of $179.47 a share, according to market data. The company reported a net loss of $2.5 billion in the final three months of 2021 and said in March that it would produce 25,000 vehicles in 2022, half of the number it originally projected.

Amazon reported in late April that its stake in Rivian led to a $7.6 billion loss in the first quarter of 2022.

Submission + - Valve Loses Bid to End Antitrust Case Over Steam Gaming Platform (bloomberglaw.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Valve must face antitrust litigation over claims that “most favored nation” policies for its Steam distribution platform have driven up video game prices across the industry, a federal judge in Seattle ruled. Judge John C. Coughenour let part of the case move forward in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, saying it’s plausible Valve exploits its market dominance to threaten and retaliate against developers that sell games for less through other retailers or platforms.

The company “allegedly enforces this regime through a combination of written and unwritten rules” imposing its own conditions on how even “non-Steam-enabled games are sold and priced,” Coughenour wrote. “These allegations are sufficient to plausibly allege unlawful conduct.” The May 6 decision hands a win to the consumers and game publishers leading the proposed class action after the judge twice issued preliminary rulings in Valve’s favor. Coughenour first ordered Steam subscribers to arbitrate their consumer claims in October, then tentatively dismissed the developer lawsuit the following month. Consumers who don’t subscribe to Steam—and never signed its arbitration agreement—are still involved in the case. [...]

Coughenour trimmed the Valve case May 6, rejecting claims that the Steam store and gaming platform operate in separate markets the company ties together. There are no plausible allegations of any consumer demand for “fully functional gaming platforms distinct from game stores,” he said. But the judge let the most-favored-nation claims move forward, walking back his earlier skepticism about the idea that Steam commissions are “supracompetitive.” He had previously found that their stability over time shows Valve didn’t raise prices as it gained market share. In fact, when the company competed only against brick-and-mortar retailers, it “did not need market power to charge a fee well above its cost structure because those brick-and-mortar competitors had a far higher cost structure,” Coughenour wrote. That makes the analysis apples-to-oranges, he said.

Submission + - Tech YouTubers Are Stepping Up a War Against Indian Scam Call Centers

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Former NASA engineer Mark Rober builds some awesome stuff on his YouTube channel, like devious squirrel mazes, but his most popular video series is the annual glitter bomb, a beautifully over-engineered fake package that douses porch pirates with a shower of glitter and fart spray. In an unexpected twist, last year's glitter bomb video also helped police catch and arrest someone involved in a phone scam scheme, and Rober's spent the subsequent year digging into just how these phone scam operations work. In a new video he shows off the extensive results of that effort, including hiring double agents to infiltrate several phone centers in India and hacking their security camera footage. And of course he got off a stink bomb, too.

For Rober, this crusade started when he teamed up with another YouTuber, Jim Browning, to try to send a glitter bomb to a scammer operation. Browning's whole channel, which has 3.7 million followers, is devoted to identifying the call centers behind tech support scams and refund scams. These scams typically target the elderly and less computer-savvy folks and usually rely on the scammers gaining remote access to your computer and then tricking them into giving up personal information like their bank account login. "Refund" scams make people believe they've been overcompensated with some bogus refund and trick them into sending cash in the mail to the scammers. The people who receive those cash packages in the United States are essentially underlings in these scam operations, so after getting a glitter bomb in their hands last year, Rober set his sights on the call centers themselves. With Browning's help, they were able to gain access to the CCTV of the infiltrated call centers, while another YouTube pair, Trilogy Media, traveled to Kolkata, India to run operations on the ground.

Submission + - US, UK and EU blame Russia for 'unacceptable' Viasat cyberattack (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S, U.K, and EU have formally blamed the Russian government for the February cyberattack against satellite communications provider Viasat, which triggered outages across central and eastern Europe hours before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

“The European Union and its member states, together with its international partners, strongly condemn the malicious cyber activity conducted by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which targeted the satellite KA-SAT network, operated by Viasat,” the EU said in the joint statement attributing the attack to Russia.

While the primary target of the attack is believed to have been the Ukrainian military, which relies heavily on satellite communications, the February 24 attack also impacted internet service for thousands of Viasat customers in Ukraine and tens of thousands of customers across Europe. The attack also disconnected remote access to about 5,800 wind turbines across Germany as they relied on Viasat routers for remote monitoring and control.

Submission + - Research Finds Over 1.5 Million "Abandoned" Mobile Apps (infoq.com)

Submitted by ellithligraw
ellithligraw writes: Analytics company Pixalate reported over 1.5 million iOS and Android apps abandoned. This analysis comes after Apple's announcement of changes to their App Store for abandoned apps, prompting a discussion on the Web.

The story continues, "Pixalate claims they crawled the App Store and Play Store to analyze all apps available for download based on their last update to determine their degree of "abandonment". Abandoned apps were defined by Pixalate as those apps that had not received an update in over two years, with "super-abandoned apps" having not received an update in at least five years."

Note that according to Statista there are 4 million iOS apps, and 3 million Android apps available.

Submission + - Moves against media outlets by PayPal. Next step in speech control: confiscation (substack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you do any kind of business through PayPal, you might want to reconsider. The Big Tech platform is reportedly now seizing accounts and threatening to steal cash from people and companies that question the government.

Consortium News and MintPress both learned this the hard way recently after PayPal deleted their accounts. Both independent media outlets received a message stating, “You can’t use PayPal anymore,” along with the following:

“At PayPal, we value a safer community for our customers to do business. We noticed activity in your account that’s inconsistent with our User Agreement, and therefore we can no longer offer you PayPal services.”

The message went on to explain that any associated bank and credit card details can no longer be removed or added, and that any money in the account “will be held for up to 180 days.”

“After 180 days, if applicable, we’ll email you with information on how to withdraw any remaining money from your PayPal account,” the message concluded.

According to Consortium editor Joe Lauria, who was able to speak to an actual human at PayPal about the frozen or “held” funds, PayPal could keep the money forever if it deems that “there was a violation.”

“It is possible,” a company representative told Lauria, that his paper’s remaining $9,384.14 balance in PayPal could be seized for good if the company decides to keep it. That amount would cover “damages,” he was told.
Brighteon.TV

“A secretive process in which they could award themselves damages, not by a judge or a jury,” Lauria explained to Matt Taibbi. “Totally in secret.”

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Alternative to "Intelligent" Google Search? 2

Submitted by Captain Chad
Captain Chad writes: I first heard about Google here on Slashdot. At the time I was using AltaVista for web searches, but Google immediately proved its superiority. Now 20+ years later I struggle with Google's latest system. It appears to be interpreting the perceived intent of my search request instead of using the very specific keywords I provide. I'm often getting results that aren't on the same topic as what I'm looking for, and adding more keywords seems to make it worse. Even using double quotes doesn't help much any more. Google Search has become too "intelligent" for me to use effectively.

So I'm looking for a replacement search engine, one that searches for what I tell it to search for, like Google used to do. With that in mind, what search engine(s) do you recommend?

Submission + - A Microsoft account will soon be required to install Windows 11 (windows11news.com)

Submitted by Ammalgam
Ammalgam writes: Looks like Microsoft is getting ready to force more people to have a Microsoft account for the installation of the latest version of its operating system. That being the upcoming Windows 11 22H2 release.

Previously, the company made these changes for Windows 11 Home users, removing the option to use a local account when installing that version of the OS. Now, this measure is not just limited to that edition, as Redmond now requires users to link accounts even on Windows 11 Pro.

That leaves just Windows 11 Enterprise free from this restraint.

Staring with the 22H2 feature update for the operating system, you will need to connect your Microsoft account during installation. Microsoft will then automatically configure OneDrive for the device and begin syncing data across your devices.

This includes transferring settings and preferences automatically to help you manage multiple PCs easily.

Submission + - US Copyright Office Seeks input On Mandatory DMCA 'Upload Filters' (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Copyright Office has launched a public consultation to evaluate whether it's wise to make certain technical protection measures mandatory under the DMCA. The Office hopes to hear all relevant stakeholders and the public at large in what may become a de facto review of the recently introduced SMART Copyright Act. [...] Following repeated nudges from Senators Thom Tillis and Patrick Leahy, the Copyright Office started looking into automated tools that online services can use to ensure that pirated content can’t be easily reuploaded. This “takedown and staydown’ approach relies on technical protection tools, which include upload filters. This is a sensitive subject that previously generated quite a bit of pushback when the EU drafted its Copyright Directive. To gauge the various options and viewpoints, the Copyright Office launched a consultation last year, which triggered a wave of objections and opposition.

Last week, the Office followed up with yet another consultation, asking for input on shortcomings in the current DMCA legislation and what alternatives could help to improve things. As things stand, online services are allowed to implement their own upload filters, which many do. Scanning uploads for potentially copyright-infringing content isn’t mandatory but that could change in the future. The consultation outline mentions several potential changes to the DMCA’s Section 512, such as online services losing their safe harbor protection if they fail to implement specific “standard technical measures” (STMs). “Is the loss of the section 512 safe harbors an appropriate remedy for interfering with or failing to accommodate STMs?” the Copyright Office asks. “Are there other obligations concerning STMs that ought to be required of internet service providers?” the list of questions continues.

Stakeholders are asked to share their views on these matters. While it is uncertain whether any measures will be made mandatory, the Copyright Office is already looking ahead. For example, who gets to decide what STMs will be mandatory, and how would the rulemaking process work? “What entity or entities would be best positioned to administer such a rulemaking? What should be the frequency of such a rulemaking? What would be the benefits of such a rulemaking? What would be the drawbacks of such a rulemaking?”

Submission + - Hackers Are Actively Exploiting BIG-IP Vulnerability With a 9.8 Severity Rating (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers are marveling at the scope and magnitude of a vulnerability that hackers are actively exploiting to take full control of network devices that run on some of the world's biggest and most sensitive networks. The vulnerability, which carries a 9.8 severity rating out of a possible 10, affects F5’s BIG-IP, a line of appliances that organizations use as load balancers, firewalls, and for inspection and encryption of data passing into and out of networks. There are more than 16,000 instances of the gear discoverable online, and F5 says it’s used by 48 of the Fortune 50. Given BIG-IP's proximity to network edges and their functions as devices that manage traffic for web servers, they often are in a position to see decrypted contents of HTTPS-protected traffic.

Last week, F5 disclosed and patched a BIG-IP vulnerability that hackers can exploit to execute commands that run with root system privileges. The threat stems from a faulty authentication implementation of the iControl REST, a set of web-based programming interfaces for configuring and managing (PDF) BIG-IP devices. “This issue allows attackers with access to the management interface to basically pretend to be an administrator due to a flaw in how the authentication is implemented,” Aaron Portnoy, the director of research and development at security firm Randori, said in a direct message. “Once you are an admin, you can interact with all the endpoints the application provides, including execute code.”

Images floating around Twitter in the past 24 hours show how hackers can use the exploit to access an F5 application endpoint named bash. Its function is to provide an interface for running user-supplied input as a bash command with root privileges. While many images show exploit code supplying a password to make commands run, exploits also work when no password is supplied. [...] Elsewhere on Twitter, researchers shared exploit code and reported seeing in-the-wild exploits that dropped backdoor webshells that threat actors could use to maintain control over hacked BIG-IP devices even after they’re patched.

Submission + - Clearview AI Agrees To Limit Sales of Facial Recognition Data In the US (engadget.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Notorious facial recognition company Clearview AI has agreed to permanently halt sales of its massive biometric database to all private companies and individuals in the United States as part of a legal settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union, per court records. Monday's announcement marks the close of a two-year legal dispute brought by the ACLU and privacy advocate groups in May of 2020 against the company over allegations that it had violated BIPA, the 2008 Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. This act requires companies to obtain permission before harvesting a person's biometric information — fingerprints, gait metrics, iris scans and faceprints for example — and empowers users to sue the companies who do not.

In addition to the nationwide private party sales ban, Clearview will not offer any of its services to Illinois local and state law enforcement agencies (as well as all private parties) for the next five years. "This means that within Illinois, Clearview cannot take advantage of BIPA’s exception for government contractors during that time," the ACLU points out, though Federal agencies, state and local law enforcement departments outside of Illinois will be unaffected. That's not all. Clearview must also end its free trial program for police officers, erect and maintain an opt-out page for Illinois residents, and spend $50,000 advertising it online. The settlement must still be approved by a federal judge before it takes effect.

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