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takyon writes:

Uber, the master of routing around regulations and exploiting legal loopholes, has found a rather big hole undermining a letter recently sent by the California Department of Motor Vehicles demanding that the company obtain a permit to test "self-driving cars" in San Francisco. Uber is arguing that the cars it plans to use in San Francisco are not truly autonomous and thus don't require a permit to operate:

Uber's position is that the semi-autonomous car system it is testing here is really no different from current advanced driver assistance systems available now for owners of Teslas and other cars that help with parking and collision avoidance. In that light, Uber doesn't believe it needs a permit because what it's working on doesn't meet the DMV requirements for a truly autonomous vehicle, which would be one that drives without the active, physical control or monitoring of a human being.

The permitting process "doesn't apply to us" because "you don't need to get belts and suspenders or whatever else if you're wearing a dress," Anthony Levandowski, who runs Uber's autonomous car programs, said in a press call Friday afternoon. "We cannot in good conscience" comply with a regulation that the company doesn't believe applies to it, he said.

The DMV cease-and-desist letter said that under the California Vehicle Code, an autonomous vehicle must have a permit to ensure that "those testing the vehicle have provided an adequate level of financial responsibility, have adequately trained qualified test drivers on the safe operation of the autonomous technology; and will notify the DMV when the vehicles have been involved in a collision." If Uber does not confirm immediately that it will stop its launch and seek a testing permit, DMV will initiate legal action, DMV attorney Brian Soublet wrote in a letter addressed to Levandowski.

The Uber "self-driving cars" will have not one, but two people at the front capable of taking control of the car.

Previously: Uber to Begin Picking Up Passengers With Autonomous Cars Next Month
Former Uber Employee Claims Widespread Privacy Problems
Uber's Self-Driving Cars to be Tested in San Francisco

Original Submission

mendax writes:

The surviving Prenda Law copyright trolls, Paul Hansmeier and John Steele, are finally in line to receive their just due. They have been arrested for running a multi-million dollar extortion scheme.
Ars reports:

The two lawyers were charged Wednesday with an 18-count indictment (PDF), describing allegations of fraud, perjury, and money laundering perpetrated between 2011 and 2014. The charges were unsealed and announced today and first reported by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Both Hansmeier, 35, and Steele, 45, were arrested earlier today before the indictment was made public.

"The defendants in this case are charged with devising a scheme that casts doubt on the integrity of our profession," said US Attorney Andrew Luger in a statement. "The conduct of these defendants was outrageous—they used deceptive lawsuits and unsuspecting judges to extort millions from vulnerable defendants. Our courts are halls of justice where fairness and the rule of law triumph, and my office will use every available resource to stop corrupt lawyers from abusing our system of justice."

The indictment explains how the defendants "used sham entities to obtain copyrights to pornographic movies—some of which they filmed themselves—and then uploaded those movies to file-sharing websites in order to lure people to download the movies."

I'm still laughing at the oxymoron "integrity of our profession" quoted in the article, but on the whole this is very good news. Two very crooked lawyers are likely headed to prison.

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takyon writes:

The Wikimedia Foundation, which controls Wikipedia and other popular MediaWiki projects, has met its "December sprint" fundraising target:

This week the Wikimedia Foundation smashed through the $25m target it had set for its "December sprint" – with a full 15 days of the month left. On December 3, Wiki's globetrotting figurehead Jimmy Wales promised that as soon as the Wikimedia Foundation met the target it had set for its traditional year-end fundraising drive, it would cease making the intrusive appeals. "We would still stop the fundraiser if enough money were raised in shorter than the planned time," Jimmy Wales promised on December 2. But there's no sign of the Foundation doing that, yet.

The WMF has now raised $25,530,943.01 in December, and $51,182,044.37 this year. That means it's on course to smash 2015's fundraising record of $53,756,012.58. [...] "It's important here to remember that the Wikimedia Foundation has nothing to do with writing or checking the content of Wikipedia. All that is done by unpaid volunteers," writes former Wikipedia Signpost co-editor Andreas Kolbe in a detailed analysis of the WMF finances.

Although the fundraising appeal states alarmingly that your cash is urgently required to "keep Wikipedia online", this is not the full picture. (As a WMF staff member admitted in 2014: "The urgency and alarm of the copy is not commensurate with my [admittedly limited] understanding of our financial situation".) Each year, the Foundation raises far more than it costs to operate the site, estimated at $3m a year. The clue comes in the full quote from the WMF, that cash is needed to "keep Wikipedia online and growing". The Foundation's own reports reveal what exactly it is that's growing.

That is one rich beggar.

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archfeld writes:

A Chinese ship has reportedly seized an underwater survey drone in full sight of a US Navy contracted research vessel.

The drone was taken on Dec. 15, the first seizure of its kind in recent memory, about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay off the Philippines just as the USNS Bowditch was about to retrieve the unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), officials said.

"The UUV was lawfully conducting a military survey in the waters of the South China Sea," one official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"It's a sovereign immune vessel, clearly marked in English not to be removed from the water - that it was U.S. property," the official said.

From the CNN report:

The US got no answer from the Chinese on the radio when it said the drone was American property, the official said.

[...] US oceanographic research vessels are often followed in the water under the assumption they are spying. In this case, however, the drone was simply measuring ocean conditions, the official said.

Some background on why the South China Sea is such a tense place.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Twitter blocks government 'spy centers' from accessing user data:

Twitter has blocked federally funded "domestic spy centers" from using a powerful social media monitoring tool after public records revealed that the government had special access to users' information for controversial surveillance efforts.

The government centers are partnerships between agencies that work to collect vast amounts of information purportedly to analyze "threats". The spy centers, according to the ACLU, target protesters, journalists and others protected by free speech rights while also racially profiling people deemed "suspicious" by law enforcement.

In one email, Dataminr told Los Angeles police that its product could be customized to track protests, adding: "Twitter owns part of Dataminr (5%) so our access to their data is unmatched – no other company ingests the full firehouse of 500 million tweets in real-time ... Twitter has been very clear with my CEO: 'Dataminr is the only company with full, unrestricted access.'"

"Dataminr is committed to privacy and civil liberties protections," the company said in a statement. "We have worked closely with Twitter to modify our product and incorporate feedback that ensures the strongest safeguards are in place for people who use Twitter."

Also at aclunc.org and The Verge.

This all sounds very familiar...

Previously: Twitter Cuts Off U.S. Spy Agency Access to Search Tool

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A transformation is happening in global energy markets that's worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity.

This has happened in isolated projects in the past: an especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging markets are costing less to build than wind projects, according to fresh data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The chart below shows the average cost of new wind and solar from 58 emerging-market economies, including China, India, and Brazil. While solar was bound to fall below wind eventually, given its steeper price declines, few predicted it would happen this soon.
...
"Renewables are robustly entering the era of undercutting" fossil fuel prices, BNEF chairman Michael Liebreich said in a note to clients this week.

Will we see a sharp pivot in energy production, or a gradual tailing off of fossil fuels as renewables take hold?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, has suggested that his organization was crucial in getting KickassTorrents taken down:

Earlier this year KickassTorrents was taken down following a criminal investigation into the site's alleged operators. While the U.S. Department of Justice handles the case, based on an FBI investigation, they were not the only ones involved. According to comments made by MPAA boss Chris Dodd, Hollywood played a crucial role as well.

[...] "We have now established a global hub — an office in Brussels. It has been tremendously successful in closing down Kickass Torrents, the single largest pirate site in the world," Dodd told Variety in an interview. The major movie studios have helped in similar criminal cases before, so this doesn't come as a complete surprise. Generally speaking, however, the MPAA is not particularly open about the role it plays in federal investigations.

Although the takedown of KickassTorrents was a major success for Hollywood, piracy remains a problem. It's even come to a point where Dodd himself is using the "hydra" terminology, which The Pirate Bay's crew first brought up a decade ago. The MPAA says that successes are still being booked every day, but they require more sophisticated methods than were used in the past. "We make great inroads, but it is a problem that isn't going away. Some days I do feel it is hydra-headed. But in the past few years, we have developed a more sophisticated and efficient way of dealing with piracy issues."

The next day (December 15th, 2016), the site was resurrected (albeit with a huge traffic load causing timeouts):

Shortly after the shutdown, several KAT-crew members regrouped in an effort to get the community part of the site back up. They launched the Katcr.co forum as their new home and hinted that torrents could come back too, in the future.

Today is the big day as Katcr.co (KATcr) has now launched a fully operational torrent site, which looks identical to its predecessor. The site starts with a clean user database but many members of the original staff are on board. "The majority of our original Staff, Admins and Moderation team joined us after Kat.cr went down – which is something we're very proud of. This shows the loyalty, dedication and real love for KAT that we all share," The KATcr team told TorrentFreak.

[...] Perhaps just as importantly, many of the site's renowned uploaders are also back. As a result, the site will be populated with a lot of fresh content right from the start. "We have all our major uploaders on board and they continued to share tirelessly even before the torrent engines returned. The torrent community can continue to expect to see uploads from all the names they know and trust," the KATcr crew says.

The relaunched site does seem to be experiencing some growing pains and continues to experience timeouts due to high traffic.

Previously: KickassTorrents Alleged Owner Arrested, Domain Names Seized

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The CEOs of Tesla, Uber, and Pepsi have joined President-elect Donald Trump's "Strategic and Policy Forum":

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped three additional high-profile chief executives including Tesla's Elon Musk to join a group that will meet regularly to give input on job creation and the economy.

Trump announced the first batch of CEOs for his "strategic and policy forum" on Dec. 2. The group is led by Stephen Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone. Trump's transition team now said the group would expand to include Tesla's Musk, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and Pepsi chief Indra Nooyi.

From the article at The Wrap:

Trump announced the initial 16 members earlier this month, and the group will be chaired by Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman. According to a press release distributed by Trump's transition team, "Members of the Forum will be charged with providing their individual views to the President — informed by their unique vantage points in the private sector — on how government policy impacts economic growth, job creation and productivity."

Also at WSJ (paywalled).

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Swedish hardware hacker Ulf Frisk has published today instructions on how to build and use a $300 device that can retrieve login passwords for Macs protected by Apple's FileVault2 disk encryption system.

Frisk's invention is named PCILeech, a device he created for carrying out Direct Memory Access (DMA) attacks, which allows an attacker to read the memory of 64bit-based operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, macOS and Windows.

PCILeech, which only runs on Windows 7 and Windows 10 PCs, uses custom software, which users can download from GitHub. The device also runs on a custom hardware rig, and the same GitHub repo provides the list of needed components.

Frisk says he discovered this summer two design flaws in how Apple implemented FileVault2 Mac disk encryption. The researcher says he integrated these two bugs in version 1.3 of PCILeech, capable of extracting Mac passwords in cleartext.

Original Submission

cafebabe writes:

The 1995 hand-drawn anime version of Ghost in the Shell was, arguably, the high water mark for Eastern animation and was widely watched in grainy NTSC or PAL VHS; along with a few other favorites, such as Akira, Bubblegum Crisis and Dominion Tank Police. From the trailer, the Mar 2017 film, Ghost in the Shell, exceeds the animation while also being more Blade Runner than Blade Runner.

A remake could easily fall into the category of a shallow money-grab, like Dune, The Italian Job, Alfie or The Day the Earth Stood Still. Furthermore, the choice of Scarlett Johansson as Major Motoko Kusanagi has been described as cultural appropriation. I'm just disappointed that a lead actress was cast who, to me, looks like a less attractive, less successful sister of a celebrity. Admittedly, she does some of her own stunts but, heh, it overshadows casting of the character Batou, who, like Gogol from Cyber City Oedo 808, has cybernetic eyes and a determined certainty when his gun is drawn.

The trailer indicates that some of the best scenes have been matched or improved and it will be complete eye-candy in IMAX 3D. Compare jumping from a building versus jumping from a building. Or a fight in shallow water versus a fight in shallow water. The trailer's inclusion of a remix of Enjoy The Silence by Depeche Mode adds greatly to the dystopian mood. "Words like violence / Break the silence." However, "All I ever wanted / All I ever needed / Is here in my arms." jars against Major Motoko Kusanagi's untrusting dependence upon an evil corporation.

Where the rebirth sequence differs from the animation it more closely resembles the failed remake of Robocop. (And both have hints of the 2012 Judge Dredd film. For example, OCP's building looks like the Justice Department building.) The Ghost in the Shell film appears to have some lesbianism. Does this follow the manga or is this more befitting of Tromeo and Juliet? I don't know. Unfortunately, the Ghost in the Shell film also seems to have strand of emo angsty existentialism; much like the deeply unsatisfying Jason Bourne films.

Despite the poor casting and thin plot elements, Ghost in the Shell will be the kinda dumb effects extravaganza that I enjoy. Furthermore, it is likely to be hugely culturally influential. For example, the creepy mannequins in the circular frames from the Westworld television series are equally indebted to Ghost in the Shell and the Proportions of Man.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

If your desktop runs a mainstream release of Linux, chances are you're vulnerable.

[...] While Evans' attacks won't work on most Linux servers, they will reliably compromise most desktop versions of Linux, which employees at Google, Facebook, and other security conscious companies often use in an attempt to avoid the pitfalls of Windows and Mac OS X. Three weeks ago, Evans released a separate Linux zero-day that had similarly dire consequences.

"I like to prove that vulnerabilities are not just theoretical—that they are actually exploitable to cause real problems," Evans told Ars when explaining why he developed—and released—an exploit for fully patched systems. "Unfortunately, there's still the occasional vulnerability disclosure that is met with skepticism about exploitability. I'm helping to stamp that out."

Like Evans' previous Linux zero-day, the proof-of-concept attacks released Tuesday exploit a memory-corruption vulnerability closely tied to GStreamer, a media framework that by default ships with many mainstream Linux distributions. This time, the exploit takes aim at a flaw in a software library alternately known as Game Music Emu and libgme, which is used to emulate music from game consoles. The two audio files are encoded in the SPC music format used in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System console from the 1990s. Both take aim at a heap overflow bug contained in code that emulates the console's Sony SPC700 processor. By changing the .spc extension to .flac and .mp3, GSteamer and Game Music Emu automatically open them.

The exploit ending in .flac works as a drive-by attack when a Fedora 25 user visits a booby-trapped webpage. With nothing more than a click required, the file will open the desktop calculator. With modification, it could load any code an attacker chooses and execute it with the same system privileges afforded to the user. While users typically don't have the same unfettered system privileges granted to root, the ones they do have are plenty powerful. Such an exploit can, for instance, read and steal all the user's most personal data, including documents, pictures, e-mail, and chat transcripts. It could also steal the user's browser cookies and sessions for Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. It could additionally persist across reboots, although not as stealthily as a root exploit. And as is growing increasingly common, it could be combined with a local root privilege exploit to gain full system rights.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/fedora-and-ubuntu-0days-show-that-hacking-desktop-linux-is-now-a-thing/

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

An end to grey hair and crows-feet could be just 10 years away after scientists showed it is possible to reverse ageing in animals.

Using a new technique which takes adult cells back to their embryonic form, US researchers at the Salk Institute in California, showed it was possible to reverse ageing in mice, allowing the animals to not only look younger, but live for 30 per cent longer.

The technique involves stimulating four genes which are particularly active during development in the womb. It was also found to work to turn the clock back on human skin cells in the lab, making them look and behave younger.

Scientists hope to eventually create a drug which can mimic the effect of the found genes which could be taken to slow down, and even reverse the ageing process. They say it will take around 10 years to get to human trials.

There is also a study paper.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

As millions on Earth enjoy a spectacular view of a supermoon on Dec. 14, a NASA-funded research team is reviewing the results of recent laboratory experiments that explain why dust "levitates" on the moon.

The research by a member of NASA's Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), hosted by NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, explains how dust may be transporting across vast regions above the lunar surface and rings of Saturn, without winds or flowing water.

Learning about these fundamental processes is helping scientists understand how dust and static electricity behave on airless bodies, and how they affect surface mechanical and electrical systems. This and other SSERVI research is helping NASA address key strategic knowledge gaps for airless bodies such as asteroids or the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, which are likely stepping stones along our journey to Mars.

The study builds on observations from the Apollo era to the recent Rosetta comet mission, and brings to closure a long-standing question about electrostatic dust transport seen on the moon and other airless planetary bodies. The research was conducted at the Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres and Cosmic Dust at the University of Colorado Boulder, and was published recently in the journal of Geophysical Research Letters.

An abstract is available.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

nj.com, thenextweb.com, and others have articles about the Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016, which President Obama signed into law Thursday.

The Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016, sponsored by Rep. Leonard Lance (R-7th Dist.) and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), would prevent non-disparagement clauses in agreements with patrons.

The Lance-Booker legislation was designed to let consumers post negative reviews on Yelp and other online sites without a company going after them. It would end the practice of businesses inserting provisions into the lengthy terms and conditions customers they face when booking or buying online.

"This law is about protecting consumers posting honest feedback online," Lance said. "Online reviews and ratings are critical in the 21st century and consumers should be able to post, comment and tweet their honest and accurate feedback without fear of retribution."

Original Submission

On IRC, Bytram brings us:

After 17 years, numerous setbacks and three times over budget, Europe's Galileo satnav system went live on Thursday promising to outperform rivals and guarantee regional self-reliance.

Initial services, free to users worldwide, are available only on smartphones and navigation units fitted with Galileo-compatible microchips.

Some devices may need only a software update to start using the service, according to the European Commission, which funds the 10 billion euro ($11 billion) project.

Source: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-galileo-europe-satnav.html

There's a list of Galileo-enabled devices at www.useGalileo.eu. One thought that goes through this editor's mind is that wIth two sources of data, the deliberate inaccuracy in the US military system seems somewhat futile now, I wonder if that misfeature is reaching end-of-life?

Original Submission