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Submission + - Record companies sue internet archive for preserving old 78 rpm recordings (reuters.com)

Submitted by bshell
bshell writes: Some of the world’s largest record labels, including Sony and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive and others for the Great 78 Project (https://great78.archive.org), a community effort for the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records that are 70 to 120 years old. The project has been in operation since 2006 to bring free public access to a largely forgotten but culturally important medium. Through the efforts of dedicated librarians, archivists and sound engineers, we have preserved hundreds of thousands of recordings that are stored on shellac resin, an obsolete and brittle medium. The resulting preserved recordings retain the scratch and pop sounds that are present in the analog artifacts; noise that modern remastering techniques remove.

Comment But who's going to watch? (Score 5, Insightful) 103

Cord cutters being taxed to fund channels they can never see because they cut the cord?

As fewer and fewer people watch linear TV at all, the desire for these "community" cable channels - never very high to begin with - will dwindle, dwindle, dwindle.

Sometimes, an idea whose time has come must also face the fact that it's time has "went."

Comment Re:Be glad you're not on Windstream/Kinetic (Score 1) 131

I've been on Windstream for years here in Houston county, GA (not exactly rural anymore). First DSL, started at 50, they upgraded the DSLAM, offered 100, that worked a treat. Another DSLAM upgrade and for a couple of years, I was on the "up to 200" plan, got ~180 down, and they just let 'er eat on upstream, routinely got 60-70 up. Rare to have any outage.

In March this year, they brought fiber through our neighborhood. I'm now on 1gig/1gig fiber, $70/month. This week, Windstream began offering 8gig symmetrical here. I can't justify either that much bandwidth (I don't want to change my entire network stack out for 10gb capable gear) nor the price they're asking - $300.

Windstream's stated goal is convert everything to fiber. Here, they're doing it, but behind schedule. I can't speak for other areas of the country.

Cox also pulled fiber through the neighborhood late last year, offering up to 1gig/1gig.

Cableco offers 1gig/50 on coax.

All this in a neighborhood that until the past few years was luck to have the 25/3 options. Things have definitely improved here, even though the neighborhood hasn't grown.

Submission + - North Carolina to Kick $845.8M of Apple Employees' State Taxes Back to Apple 2

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "The announcement Monday that Apple Inc. would locate its new high-tech campus in Research Triangle Park," reports The News&Observer's Tyler Dukes, "was heralded as a coup for the state, which has pursued the company and the promise of its high-paying jobs for at least three years. But that victory comes at a cost. State and local incentives for the deal could be worth nearly $1 billion to the company over the next four decades. That award, by far the largest in the state’s history, will mostly come from new Apple employees’ state income tax payments — the vast majority of which will flow right back to Apple. [...] The JDIG award approved by the state’s Economic Investment Committee Monday morning would mean $845.8 million in payments to Apple through 2061 — provided the company meets its hiring, worker-retention and investment targets. These payments are recouped from the income taxes Apple’s new employees would normally pay to the state. Starting in 2023, the state will start issuing payments to Apple worth a little more than half of those employees’ annual tax payments. In 2032, if all goes as planned, that percentage increases to 90%."

Apple, whose market cap on Monday was $2.26 trillion, isn't exactly hurting for money. In February, Investopedia reported that Apple was sitting on $36 billion of cash and $160 billion of marketable securities but was selling $14 billion of bonds to continue taking advantage of historically low borrowing rates. The bonds were sold with coupons between 0.7% (for the 5-year note) and 2.8% (for the 40-year bond). Unlike the 7.595% fixed Federal PLUS Student Loan interest you may be paying for the next 30 years, Investopedia notes that the 0.7%-2.8% interest expenses Apple incurs on its bond proceeds — which may be used to fund Apple share repurchases and dividends — are fully tax deductible. Last year, Apple borrowed $8.5 billion in May and another $5.5 billion in August, joining the roster of U.S. investment-grade companies borrowing a record amount of debt in the corporate bond market during the pandemic.

Submission + - Malicious Actors are targeting Go packages on Github (michenriksen.com)

Submitted by ArghBlarg
ArghBlarg writes: Michael Henrikson describes his investigations into Go package manager 'supply chain' attacks and found at least one very suspicious package, typosquatting on one of the most popular logging libraries. The imposter package phones home to an IP he alleges belongs to the Chinese company Tencent:

It looks like the author utfave wants to know the hostname, operating system, and architecture of all the machines using their version of urfave/cli. The function extracts the system information and then calls out to the IP address 122.51.124.140 belonging to the Chinese company Shenzhen Tencent Computer Systems via HTTP with the system information added as URL parameters. While this code won’t give them any access to systems, it’s highly suspicious that they collect this information and the actor can quickly change this code to call back with a reverse shell if they identify a system to be valuable or interesting.

A good case for always going over your package imports, in any language, and ensuring you're either a) auditing them regularly, or b) keeping frozen vendored copies which you can trust.

Submission + - Why Discord is switching from Go to Rust

Submitted by RoccamOccam
RoccamOccam writes: The developers at Discord have seen success with Rust on their video encoding pipeline for Go Live and on their Elixir NIFs' server. Recently, they've penned a post explaining how they have drastically improved the performance of a service by switching its implementation from Go to Rust.

From the post, "Remarkably, we had only put very basic thought into optimization as the Rust version was written. Even with just basic optimization, Rust was able to outperform the hyper hand-tuned Go version. This is a huge testament to how easy it is to write efficient programs with Rust compared to the deep dive we had to do with Go."

Submission + - Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine just got a lot easier to transport and distri (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by FrankOVD
FrankOVD writes: The COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech now has less stringent and extreme transportation requirements than it debuted with. Originally, the mRNA-based vaccine had to be maintained at ultra-low temperatures throughout the transportation chain in order to remain viable – between -76F and -112F. New stability data collected by Pfizer and BioNTech, which has been submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for review, allow it to be stored at temps between 5F and -13F – ranges available in standard medical freezers found in most clinics and care facilities.
The vaccine should remain stable for up to two weeks at that temperature, which vastly improves the flexibility of its options for transportation, and last-mile storage in preparation for administration to patients. To date, the vaccine has relied largely on existing “cold-chain” infrastructure to be in place in order for it to be able to reach the areas where it’s being used to inoculate patients. That limitation hasn’t been in place for Moderna’s vaccine, which is stable at even higher, standard refrigerator temperatures for up to a month.

Submission + - Google Maps will soon show COVID vaccine locations (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by wooloohoo
wooloohoo writes: Vaccine site listings will show access requirements and appointment info.

The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine means a ton of people are soon going to be looking for vaccination sites. As usual, Google wants to be at the center of getting people where they're going, and in a new blog post Google says it will start loading Search and Maps with information on vaccination sites. "In the coming weeks," the company writes, "COVID-19 vaccination locations will be available in Google Search and Maps, starting with Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, with more states and countries to come."

Soon you'll be able to search "COVID vaccine" and get location results showing access requirements, appointment information, and if a site has a drive-through. Google says it is partnering with the Boston Children's Hospital's VaccineFinder.org, government agencies, and retail pharmacies for the data.

Submission + - Simulating 800,000 years of California earthquake history to pinpoint risks (utexas.edu)

Submitted by aarondubrow
aarondubrow writes: A study in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America presents results from a new earthquake simulator, RSQSim, that simulates hundreds of thousands of years of seismic history in California. Coupled with another code, CyberShake, the framework can calculate the amount of shaking that would occur for each quake. The framework makes use of two of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet: Frontera, at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, and Summit, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The new approach improves seismologists' ability to pinpoint how big an earthquake might occur at a given location, allowing building code developers, architects, and structural engineers to design more resilient buildings that can survive earthquakes.

Submission + - Canada's AeroVelo breaks human-powered land speed record (design-engineering.com)

Submitted by yyzmcleod
yyzmcleod writes: First, they designed and flew the world’s first human-powered ornithopter called the Snowbird in 2010. Then, in 2013, they surmounted the seemingly impossible challenge of winning the Sikorsky Prize with the Atlas human-powered helicopter.

And now, as of yesterday, AeroVelo, the Ontario-based team of engineers and University of Toronto students, have helped their captain, Dr. Todd Reichert, become the fastest human-powered man alive. At the World Human Powered Speed Challenge (WHPSC), held annually along a five-mile stretch of highway in Battle Mountain, Nevada, the team’s Eta recumbent speed bike hit 85.71mph (137.93km/h) Thursday morning, besting the previous world record of 83.13 mph.

Submission + - Tracking a Bluetooth ATM Skimming Gang in Mexico

Submitted by tsu doh nimh
tsu doh nimh writes: Brian Krebs has an interesting and entertaining three-part series this week on how he spent his summer vacation: driving around the Cancun area looking for ATMs beaconing out Bluetooth signals indicating the machines are compromised by crooks. Turns out, he didn't have to look for: His own hotel had a hacked machine. Krebs said he first learned about the scheme when an ATM industry insider reached out to say that some Eastern European guys had approached all of his ATM technicians offering bribes if the technicians allowed physical access to the machines. Once inside, the crooks installed two tiny Bluetooth radios — one for the card reader and one for the PIN pad. Krebs's series concludes with a closer look at Intacash, a new ATM company whose machines now blanket Cancun and other tourist areas but which is suspected of being connected to the skimming activity.

Submission + - Obama invites Texas teen to White House after 'bomb' clock incident at school (upi.com)

Submitted by The Grim Reefer
The Grim Reefer writes: IRVING, Texas, Sept. 16 (UPI) — A Texas teen who made a digital clock and brought it to school, only to end up being arrested and accused of a bomb scare, has been invited to the White House to show off his creation.

  President Obama
    @POTUS
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.

Ahmed Mohamed, 14, faces no charges after he was arrested in Texas for bringing to school a homemade clock teachers and administrators mistook for a bomb — a detention some claim was due to his Muslim background.

Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said the event was a "naive accident," adding that the department is "confident" the clock is not a bomb and that the case is closed.

Submission + - Fukishama Springs Water Leak

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: The Japanese Fukishama crisis took a turn for the worse this week as it was found a barrier built to contain contaminated water has been breached; a leak defined by 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium. This is yet another problem on top of a spate of errors plauging the 2011 nuclear disaster site. Nuclear regulatory official Shinji Kinjo has cited Tokyo Electric Power Company as having a "Weak sense of crisis" as well as hinted at previous bunglings by TEPCO as the reason one cannot "just leave it up to Tepco alone". If Nuclear energy is ever to move forward, these types of disasters need to be eliminated. Is the ongoing saga of Fukishama a problem which can be cured with appropriate technology, or are disasters like this simply the element of cost vs. risk in the business of nuclear energy?

Submission + - BREACH Compression Attack Steals SSL Secrets (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: A serious attack against ciphertext secrets buried inside HTTPS responses has prompted an advisory from Homeland Security. The BREACH attack is an offshoot of CRIME, which was thought dead and buried after it was disclosed in September. Released at last week’s Black Hat USA 2013, BREACH enables an attacker to read encrypted messages over the Web by injecting plaintext into an HTTPS request and measuring compression changes.
Researchers Angelo Prado, Neal Harris and Yoel Gluck demonstrated the attack against Outlook Web Access (OWA) at Black Hat. Once the Web application was opened and the Breach attack was launched, within 30 seconds the attackers had extracted the secret.
“We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem,” said the CERT advisory, released one day after the Black Hat presentation.

Submission + - XKeyscore: NSA Tool Collects 'Nearly Everything A User Does On The Internet' (theguardian.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats, social media activities and the internet browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet. The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight. The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10. "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email". US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."

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