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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 53 declined, 90 accepted (143 total, 62.94% accepted)

Submission + - Critical U.S. Election Systems Have Been Left Exposed Online (vice.com)

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: For years, U.S. election officials and voting machine vendors have insisted that critical election systems are never connected to the internet and therefore can’t be hacked.

But a group of election security experts have found what they believe to be nearly three dozen backend election systems in 10 states connected to the internet over the last year, including some in critical swing states. These include systems in nine Wisconsin counties, in four Michigan counties, and in seven Florida counties—all states that are perennial battlegrounds in presidential elections. Some of the systems have been online for a year and possibly longer.

Submission + - Who Killed the American Demoscene? (vice.com)

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: Every year, a few dozen coders ride an Amtrak train from New York City to Montreal as part of Synchrony, one of the only annual demoparties in the United States. The lack of demoparties is conspicuous and in stark contrast to the European demoscene, which boasts dozens of annual demoparties, some of which attract thousands of participants. With this discrepancy in mind, I tagged along with the Synchrony crew this year in pursuit of an answer to a deceptively simple question—who killed the American demoscene?

Submission + - Why Sleep Apnea Patients Rely on a Lone, DRM-Breaking CPAP Machine Hacker

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: "SleepyHead" is a free, open-source, and definitely not FDA-approved piece of software for sleep apnea patients that is the product of thousands of hours of hacking and development by a lone Australian developer named Mark Watkins, who has helped thousands of sleep apnea patients take back control of their treatment from overburdened and underinvested doctors. The software gives patients access to the sleep data that is already being generated by their CPAP machines but generally remains inaccessible, hidden by DRM and proprietary data formats that can only be read by authorized users (doctors) on proprietary pieces of software that patients often can’t buy or download. SleepyHead and community-run forums like CPAPtalk.com and ApneaBoard.com have allowed patients to circumvent medical device manufacturers, who would prefer that the software not exist at all.

Medical device manufacturers fought in 2015 to prevent an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to legalize hacking by patients who wanted to access their own data, but an exemption was granted, legalizing SleepyHead and software like it.

Submission + - New App Lets You 'Sue Anyone By Pressing a Button'

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: Do Not Pay, a free service that launched in the iOS App store today, uses artificial intelligence to help people win up to $25,000 in small claims court. It’s the latest project from 21-year-old Stanford senior Joshua Browder, whose service previously allowed people to fight parking tickets or sue Equifax; now, the app has streamlined the process. It’s the “first ever service to sue anyone (in all 3,000 counties in 50 states) by pressing a button.”

Submission + - Farmer Lobbying Group Sells Out, Helps Enshrine John Deere's Repair Monopoly

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: The California Farm Bureau, a group that lobbies on behalf of farmers, reached a "right to repair" agreement with the Equipment Dealers Association (which represents John Deere and other manufacturers) last week. But the specifics of the agreement were written by the manufacturers, and falls far short of providing the types of change that would be needed to make repairing tractors easier.

In fact, the agreement makes the same concessions that the Equipment Dealers Association announced in February it would voluntarily give to all farmers. The agreement will not allow farmers to buy repair parts, break firmware DRM, or otherwise alter software for the purposes of repair.

Submission + - Verizon Didn't Bother to Write a Privacy Policy for its 'Privacy Protecting' VPN

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: Verizon is rolling out a new Virtual Private Network service called Safe Wi-Fi it developed in conjunction with McAfee. According to Verizon, the $4 per month service “protects your privacy and blocks ad tracking, creating a secure Wi-Fi connection anywhere in the world.”
But the company didn't even write a privacy policy for the product: Verizon's terms of service directs all of its VPN users to the general McAfee privacy policy governing all of its products. That policy, in turn, states that McAfee and Verizon have the right to collect an ocean of data on the end user, including carrier data, Bluetooth device IDs, mobile device ID, mobile advertising identifiers, MAC address, IMEI data, and more. The policy explicitly says that browsing history can be used to help target ads at you:

Submission + - California Becomes 18th State to Consider Right to Repair Legislation

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: The right to repair battle has come to Silicon Valley’s home state: Wednesday, a state assemblymember announced that California would become the 18th state in the country to consider legislation that would make it easier to repair your electronics.

“The Right to Repair Act will provide consumers with the freedom to have their electronic products and appliances fixed by a repair shop or service provider of their choice, a practice that was taken for granted a generation ago but is now becoming increasingly rare in a world of planned obsolescence,” Susan Talamantes Engman, a Democrat from Stockton who introduced the bill, said in a statement.

The announcement had been rumored for about a week but became official Wednesday. The bill would require electronics manufacturers to make repair guides and repair parts available to the public and independent repair professionals and would also would make diagnostic software and tools that are available to authorized and first-party repair technicians available to independent companies.

Submission + - iOS Trusted Boot Source Code Anonymously Leaked on GitHub

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: An anonymous person posted what experts say is the source code for a core component of the iPhone’s operating system on GitHub, which could pave the way for hackers and security researchers to find vulnerabilities in iOS and make iPhone jailbreaks easier to achieve.

The code is for “iBoot,” which is the part of iOS that is responsible for ensuring a trusted boot of the operating system. It’s the program that loads iOS, the very first process that runs when you turn on your iPhone. Bugs in the boot process are the most valuable ones if reported to Apple through its bounty program, which values them at a max payment of $200,000.

Submission + - Washington Bill Makes it Illegal to Sell Gadgets Without Replaceable Batteries

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: A bill that would make it easier to fix your electronics is rapidly hurtling through the Washington state legislature. The bill’s ascent is fueled by Apple’s iPhone-throttling controversy, which has placed a renewed focus on the fact that our electronics have become increasingly difficult to repair.
Starting in 2019, the bill would ban the sale of electronics that are designed “in such a way as to prevent reasonable diagnostic or repair functions by an independent repair provider. Preventing reasonable diagnostic or repair functions includes permanently affixing a battery in a manner that makes it difficult or impossible to remove.”

Submission + - More Than 750 American Communities Have Built Their Own Internet Networks

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: More communities than ever are embracing building their own broadband networks as an alternative to the big telecom status quo.

According to a freshly updated map of community-owned networks, more than 750 communities across the United States have embraced operating their own broadband network, are served by local rural electric cooperatives, or have made at least some portion of a local fiber network publicly available.

Submission + - Apple: iPhones Are Too 'Complex' to Allow Unauthorized Repair

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: Apple's top environmental officer made the company's most extensive statements about the repairability of Apple hardware Tuesday: "Our first thought is, 'You don't need to repair this.' When you do, we want the repair to be fairly priced and accessible to you," Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of policy and social initiatives said at TechCrunch Disrupt. "To think about these very complex products and say the answer to all our problems is that you should have anybody to repair and have access to the parts is not looking at the whole problem."

Apple has lobbied against "Fair Repair" bills in 11 states that would require the company to make its repair guides available and to sell replacement parts to the general public. Instead, it has focused on an "authorized service provider" model that allows the company to control the price and availability of repair.

Submission + - The iPhone Is Guaranteed to Last Only One Year, Apple Argues in Court

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: Last month, Greg Joswiak, Apple's VP of iOS, iPad, and iPhone Marketing, told Buzzfeed that iPhones are "the highest quality and most durable devices. We do this because it's better for the customer, for the iPhone, and for the planet."
But in a class-action court case over the widespread premature failure of tens of thousands of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices, Apple argues that the company cannot guarantee any iPhone for more than a year. In a motion to dismiss, Apple argued that "to hold Apple's Limited Warranty substantively unconscionable simply because Plaintiffs expect their iPhones to last the length of their cellular service contracts 'would place a burden on [Apple] for which it did not contract.'"

Submission + - Physicists Have Created the Brightest Light Ever Recorded

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: A group of physicists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Extreme Light Laboratory announced Monday that they have created the brightest light ever produced on Earth using Diocles, one of the most powerful lasers in the United States.
When this high intensity laser pulse, which is one billion times brighter than the surface of the sun, strikes the electron, it causes it to behave differently. By firing this laser at individual electrons, the researchers found that past a certain threshold, the brightness of light will actually change an object's appearance rather than simply making it brighter.

Submission + - The Right to Repair Movement Is Forcing Apple to Change

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: Apple can no longer ignore the repair insurgency that's been brewing: The right to repair movement is winning, and Apple's behavior is changing.

In the last few months, Apple has made political, design, and customer service decisions that suggest the right to repair movement is having a real impact on the company's operations.

Submission + - Website Plugin Tracks Congress's Browsing Habits 1

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: A new plugin created by a software engineer in North Carolina lets website administrators monitor when someone accesses their site from an IP address associated with the federal government. It was created to protest a law that made it easier for ISPs to sell your browsing history to advertisers.

The tool lets website administrators track whether members of Congress, the Senate, White House staff, or Federal Communications Commission staff are looking at their site, and uses technology similar to CongressEdits, an automated Twitter account that tweets whenever a Wikipedia page is edited from IP addresses associated with Congress.

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