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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 4 declined, 7 accepted (11 total, 63.64% accepted)

Submission + - HashiCorp CEO predicts OSS-free Silicon Valley (www.thestack.technology)

Submitted by Striek
Striek writes: That is, unless the "open-source" model evolves. (The entire The Stack title couldn't fit in a Slashdot title). On August 10th, 2023, HashiCorp made the controversial decision to change licenses from the Mozilla Public License to MariaDB's Business Source Licesne. The key difference between these two licenses is that the BSL limits its grant to "non-production use". In an interview, HashiCorp CEO Dave McJannet says

there would be “no more open source companies in Silicon Valley” unless the community rethinks how it protects innovation, as he defended the firm’s license switch at its user conference this month.

the Linux Foundation’s adoption of Open Tofu raised serious questions. “What does it say for the future of open source, if foundations will just take it and give it a home. That is tragic for open source innovation. I will tell you, if that were to happen, there'll be no more open source companies in Silicon Valley.

Considering OSS's long history in Silicon Valley, this is a rather bold claim.

Submission + - VoIP.ms victim of week long sustained DDoS attack

Submitted by Striek
Striek writes: VoIP.ms, a Canadian VoIP provider, has been under a sustained, and presumably massive DDoS attack which started on the September 16th, 2021. The attack has been disruptive enough to be covered by major media outlets, including Hacker News, ZDNet, Ars Technica, BleepingComputer, CTV News, and The Toronto Star.

They have so far refused to pay a ransom demand, which has grown from 1 bitcoin at the outset ($45,000 USD at that time), to 100 bitcoin now, or $45 million. Similar attacks have occurred recently on several UK based VOiP providers.

With DDoS attacks against VOiP infrastructure difficult to defend against — or at least more difficult than your bog-standard denial of service, this may be setting a worrying trend.

Bleeping Computer wrote:

Threat actors are targeting voice-over-Internet provider VoIP.ms with a DDoS attack and extorting the company to stop the assault that's severely disrupting the company's operation. VoIP.ms is an Internet phone service company that provides affordable voice-over-IP service to businesses around the world. As customers configured their VoIP equipment to connect to the company's domain name, the DDoS attack disrupted telephony services, preventing them from receiving or making phone calls. As DNS was no longer working, the company advised customers to modify their HOSTS file to point the domain at their IP address to bypass DNS resolution. However, this just led the threat actors to perform DDoS attacks directly at that IP address as well. To mitigate the attacks, VoIP.ms moved their website and DNS servers to Cloudflare, and while they reported some success, the company's site and VoIP infrastructure still have issues due to the continued denial-of-service attack. "A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack continues to be targeted at our Websites and POP servers. Our team is deploying continuous efforts to stop this however the service is being intermittently affected. We apologize for all the inconveniences," says an announcement posted to the VoIP.ms website. At the time of this writing, the site is bouncing back and forth between being accessible and displaying a 500 Internal Server Error

Submission + - Overwatch director speaks out against console mouse/keyboard adapters (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Striek
Striek writes:

Regardless of where you fall in the long-running debate between keyboard/mouse and analog stick controls, you could historically be relatively sure that everyone on a single platform would be playing with the same control scheme. Recently, though, third-party adapters have started allowing console players to use a mouse and keyboard effectively on dedicated consoles, throwing off the competitive balance in a way that Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan doesn't appreciate.

"The Overwatch team objects to the use of mouse and keyboard on console," Kaplan wrote on the Battle.net forums. "We have contacted both first-party console manufacturers and expressed our concern about the use of mouse and keyboard and input conversion devices.


Submission + - Fidel Castro is Dead (nytimes.com) 2

Submitted by Striek
Striek writes: Fidel Castro, the fiery apostle of revolution who brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere in 1959 and then defied the United States for nearly half a century as Cuba’s maximum leader, bedeviling 11 American presidents and briefly pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war, died Friday. He was 90.

His death was announced by Cuban state television.

In declining health for several years, Mr. Castro had orchestrated what he hoped would be the continuation of his Communist revolution, stepping aside in 2006 when he was felled by a serious illness. He provisionally ceded much of his power to his younger brother Raúl, now 85, and two years later formally resigned as president. Raúl Castro, who had fought alongside Fidel Castro from the earliest days of the insurrection and remained minister of defense and his brother’s closest confidant, has ruled Cuba since then, although he has told the Cuban people he intends to resign in 2018.

Submission + - The YouTube Demonetization of 2016 (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Striek
Striek writes:

On Wednesday, several YouTube creators posted videos that voiced concerns over the platform’s process of demonetizing videos for not being friendly to advertisers.

Many YouTube creators have similar concerns — that no, this isn't censorship in the strictest sense, but that YouTube owes its users a better commitment to free speech than most private companies due to its dominant marketplace position. Its criteria for videos being "advertiser-friendly" are also incredibly vague or restrictive, or both:

Content that is considered inappropriate for advertising includes:

Sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor
Violence, including display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism
Inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language
Promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use and abuse of such items
Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown

You read that right — any YouTube video covering any war or natural disaster is considered inappropriate for advertising — which essentially includes all news and current events shows. This might not seem like a big deal to many people, but it would be, if you made your living creating YouTube videos. So while technically not censorship, many people are arguing YouTube has gone a few steps too far with this, and are likewise worried that this will be too selectively enforced.

Submission + - Windows 10 Now Showing Full Screen Ads on Lock Screen (consumerist.com)

Submitted by Striek
Striek writes: Several media outlets are reporting that Windows 10 has now started showing full screen ads on users' lock screens. They can be turned off, but how many people will actually bother with this?

Tips site How-To Geek discovered that Windows Spotlight—which normally rotates between a selection of photographs—was being used to display an ad for Square Enix’s Rise of the Tomb Raider. Understandably, most people probably don’t want to be hit in the face with a full-screen ad for a video game before they even unlock their computer. If you want to make sure you’re not hit with these ads, follow these steps to disable Windows Spotlight:

Open the Start Menu and search for “Lock Screen Settings.”

Under “Background,” select either Picture or Slideshow, instead of Windows Spotlight.

Scroll down to “Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen” and this toggle.

Apparently the “and more” is where Microsoft hid the advertisements. (emphasis mine)


Submission + - Don't hate perky morning people: It might be their DNA's fault. (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Striek
Striek writes: Aggregated genome data from 23andme.com was analyzed and published in Nature magazine, and now further evidence has been added to the belief that being a morning person or a night owl is wired in our DNA.

It's not the first time such research has been published, either.

So those of us who work late into the night and prefer to rise at noon, much to the chagrin of our partners, can point to our DNA as the reason, not our lazy habits.

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