SoylentNews

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

You may recall that in 2014 we wrote about a strange occurrence having to do with Chase Bank refusing to provide its banking services to Teagan Presley, a rather well known adult film actress. When it became clear that Presley wasn't the only performer to whom this was happening, it initially looked as though banks were engaging in a form of slut-shaming of adult film actors. It turned out, however, that it was the federal government doing the slut-shaming, with the emergence of the Department of Justice's Operation Choke Point. This DOJ policy that was developed to combat financial fraud somehow bled over the stencil lines and became a sort of banking morality police, encouraging banks to cut off services to industries like adult film, fireworks retail stores, and sellers engaged in what the DOJ deemed to be "racist materials." It's worth highlighting that all of these industries and actions, whether you like them or not, are legal, yet the DOJ was essentially attempting to extra-judiciously scuttle them through secretive federal policy. That should have terrified everyone, but didn't, and so the program went on.

Until recently. The justice department recently announced that Operation Choke Point will be ended.

The move hands a big victory to Republican lawmakers who charged that the initiative — dubbed "Operation Choke Point" — was hurting legitimate businesses. In a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd referred to the program as "a misguided initiative."

"We share your view that law abiding businesses should not be targeted simply for operating in an industry that a particular administration might disfavor," says the letter, obtained by progressive activist group Allied Progress and later provided to POLITICO by Goodlatte's office. "Enforcement decisions should always be made based on facts and the applicable law. We reiterate that the Department will not discourage the provision of financial services to lawful industries, including businesses engaged in short-term lending and firearms-related activities," it adds. A nearly identical letter was sent to Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).

I was more annoyed by their use of it against gun stores but good riddance regardless.

Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170818/11113638027/doj-to-end-operation-chokepoint-porn-stars-free-to-bank-once-more.shtml

Previously:
Adult Film Stars' Bank Accounts Closed

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

The whole New Zealand-based spying operation against Kim Dotcom and his Megaupload co-defendants was illegal, the High Court has ruled. The revelation appears in a newly released decision, which shows the GCSB spy agency refusing to respond to questions about its activities on the basis that could jeopardize national security.

In the months that preceded the January 2012 raid on file-storage site Megaupload, authorities in New Zealand used the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) spy agency to monitor Kim and Mona Dotcom, plus Megaupload co-defendant Bram van der Kolk. When this fact was revealed it developed into a crisis. The GCSB was forbidden by law from conducting surveillance on its own citizens or permanent residents in the country, which led to former Prime Minister John Key later apologizing for the error.

With Dotcom determined to uncover the truth, the entrepreneur launched legal action in pursuit of the information illegally obtained by GCSB and to obtain compensation. In July, the High Court determined that Dotcom wouldn't get access to the information but it also revealed that the scope of the spying went on much longer than previously admitted, a fact later confirmed by the police. This raised the specter that not only did the GCSB continue to spy on Dotcom after it knew it was acting illegally, but that an earlier affidavit from a GCSB staff member was suspect.

With the saga continuing to drag on, revelations published in New Zealand this morning indicate that not only was the spying on Dotcom illegal, the entire spying operation – which included his Megaupload co-defendants – was too.

Oopsie...

Source: https://torrentfreak.com/entire-kim-dotcom-spying-operation-was-illegal-high-court-rules-170825/ (archive)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

It's not an acid bath. It's an alkaline bath:

When it comes to putting loved ones in their final resting places, our choice has long been whether to bury a body or cremate it. But a third option has been gaining attention recently: Alkaline hydrolysis, which involves dissolving a body in a liquid solution. The process leaves behind bones that can be ground into ash using much less energy than cremation. Though it sounds a bit gruesome, the approach offers many benefits. "This by far is the most environmentally friendly choice" Dean Fisher, director of the Donated Body Program at UCLA told Wired.

[...] Having a body cremated may seem like a sustainable burial, but in most cases it's not great for the environment. In cremation, everything is burned into ash, including bone and medical implants. That can lead to the release of harmful pollutants. In the UK, for instance, cremation contributes to 16% of all mercury pollution. And as The Atlantic has reported, cremation takes about two SUV-tanks worth of gas to cremate a single body. Alkaline hydrolysis, on the other hand, requires only an eighth of that energy, Gizmodo reports.

Also at Here & Now (4:45 audio).

California: AB-967 Human remains disposal: alkaline hydrolysis: licensure and regulation.

Original Submission

aristarchus writes:

The "Daily Stormer", a neo-Nazi website that has been having trouble staying online since Charlottesville, has once again been shutdown.

According to The Verge:

The neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer briefly returned to the web today, using a new URL and a string of new hosts to dodge the bans that took it off the internet last week. The site reappeared this morning at the address Punished-stormer.com, apparently using Dreamhost as both a host and DNS provider.

[note: url modified]

Shortly after the new site became public, Anonymous groups began a denial-of-service attack against it, targeting the Dreamhost DNS infrastructure that makes the site accessible to the rest of the web. The result was nearly two hours of intermittent downtime for the countless sites using Dreamhost's DNS infrastructure.

In WWII, things like this were called "collateral damage", where innocent casualties were necessary in order to get at the Nazis themselves. But is this sort of action legitimate on the internet? Especially by non-governmental organizations?

Also reported at https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2017/08/dreamhost-ddos-attack/
Related story: https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/21/16180614/charlottesville-daily-stormer-alt-right-internet-domain

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman and "de facto chief" of Samsung Lee Jae-yong (aka Jay Y. Lee) has been sentenced to five years in prison for bribery, embezzlement, perjury, and other charges:

A South Korean court has found Lee Jae-yong, the de facto chief of the sprawling Samsung business empire, guilty of bribery and other corruption charges. Lee, the billionaire son of Samsung's ailing chairman, was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday, well short of the 12-year sentence prosecutors had sought. The criminal conviction is a blow for Samsung, the world's largest smartphone maker and South Korea's biggest family-run conglomerate whose businesses are estimated to account for around 15% of the country's entire economy.

The so-called "trial of the century" has gripped South Korea for months. It's part of a huge influence-peddling scandal that brought down the government of former President Park Geun-hye. "The public is disappointed that this kind of large-scale crime caused by cozy relations between politics and business still happens -- it's not in the past but remains a reality," Judge Kim Jin-dong said in court. He also laid some of the blame on Park, saying the former president made "aggressive demands" of Samsung.

[...] Samsung Electronics' (SSNLF) shares closed down 1.1% in Seoul following the verdict Friday. But the stock is still not far below the record high it hit last month. And although the guilty verdict is a black mark on Samsung's reputation, analysts said Lee's prison sentence is unlikely to affect the tech giant's day-to-day operations. The company has continued to post strong profits since he was first detained in the case.

Lee is following in the footsteps of many other chiefs of South Korea's big family-run conglomerates, known as chaebol. His father, Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee, was twice sentenced to prison -- and twice pardoned. Serving jail time "is like a rite of passage," David Kang, director of the University of Southern California's Korean Studies Institute, said in an interview before the verdict was announced. "The question will really be how long does he serve."

Lee will appeal the conviction.

Also at Bloomberg (opinion) and NPR (analysis).

Previously: Warrant Sought for the Arrest of Samsung's Vice Chairman
Samsung Vice Chairman a Suspect in South Korean Presidential Bribery Probe
President Park Geun-hye's Impeachment Upheld as South Korea's "Trial of the Century" Begins
Samsung Vice Chairman Ruling Expected on August 25

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists have studied the Hadza community in Tanzania and found that their microbiomes change based on the season and foods eaten:

In Tanzania, not far from the Serengeti, live the Hadza, a community of about 1,300 people. For such a small group, they attract a lot of scientific attention.

Many of the Hadza live solely on the animals they kill, along with honey, berries and a few other wild foods. For the first 95 percent of our species's history, there was no other way to live.

So the Hadza have been closely scrutinized for clues about the hunter-gather way of life: how they find their food, how much energy they use — even how much sleep they get.

On Thursday, scientists described another way in which the Hadza are exceptional. Their gut microbiome — the bacteria that live in their intestines — swings through a predictable annual cycle.

Some bacterial species disappear entirely and then return, in a rhythm that likely reflects regular changes in the Hadza diet. Many gut bacteria that wax and wane drastically are rare in people living in industrialized societies.

Also at Science Magazine and NPR.

Seasonal cycling in the gut microbiome of the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania (open, DOI: 10.1126/science.aan4834) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A health insurer has accidentally exposed the HIV status of some customers with letters that can be partially read through a clear piece of plastic:

Health insurance company Aetna "stunned" some of its customers last month when it accidentally made their HIV statuses visible from the outside of envelopes, two legal groups said Thursday. The letters, which contained information about changes in pharmacy benefits and access to HIV medications, were sent to about 12,000 customers across multiple states, Aetna confirmed in a statement.

For some of these customers, a plastic window on the envelope exposed not only the patient's name and address, but also a reference to filling prescriptions for HIV medications. This meant that whoever picked up the mail that day — a family member, a friend, a postal worker — would have been able to see the confidential information, according to the Legal Action Center and the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania. It is not known exactly how many customers were affected.

Attorneys from both legal groups wrote to Aetna on Thursday demanding that the company immediately stop sending customers mail that "illegally discloses that they are taking HIV medication." It also demanded that the insurer take necessary measures to make sure such a breach doesn't happen again.

The legal groups wrote on behalf of Aetna customers in Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia, according to their letter. The attorneys have so far received 23 complaints regarding the misstep, and more continue to come in, CNN reported.

The Legal Action Center and the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania provided this image of a Brooklyn, NY customer's letter, attached to their demand letter (PDF). The text reads: "Dear [REDACTED], The purpose of this letter is to advise you of options [...] Aetna health plan when filing prescriptions for HIV Medic [...] members can use a retail pharmacy or a mail order pharma".

Also at BBC, NPR, and STAT News.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A reexamination of a Babylonian tablet has found what may be the first appearance of trigonometry:

Consisting of four columns and 15 rows of numbers inscribed in cuneiform, the famous P322 tablet was discovered in the early 1900s in what is now southern Iraq by archaeologist, antiquities dealer, and diplomat Edgar Banks, the inspiration for the fictional character Indiana Jones.

Now stored at Columbia University, the tablet first garnered attention in the 1940s, when historians recognized that its cuneiform inscriptions contain a series of numbers echoing the Pythagorean theorem, which explains the relationship of the lengths of the sides of a right triangle. (The theorem: The square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the square of the other two sides.) But why ancient scribes generated and sorted these numbers in the first place has been debated for decades.

Mathematician Daniel Mansfield of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney was developing a course for high school math teachers in Australia when he came across an image of P322. Intrigued, he teamed up with UNSW mathematician Norman Wildberger to study it. "It took me 2 years of looking at this [tablet] and saying 'I'm sure it's trig, I'm sure it's trig, but how?'" Mansfield says. The familiar sines, cosines, and angles used by Greek astronomers and modern-day high schoolers were completely missing. Instead, each entry includes information on two sides of a right triangle: the ratio of the short side to the long side and the ratio of the short side to the diagonal, or hypotenuse.

Mansfield realized that the information he needed was in missing pieces of P322 that had been reconstructed by other researchers. "Those two ratios from the reconstruction really made P322 into a clean and easy-to-use trigonometric table," he says. He and Wildberger concluded that the Babylonians expressed trigonometry in terms of exact ratios of the lengths of the sides of right triangles [open, DOI: 10.1016/j.hm.2017.08.001] [DX], rather than by angles, using their base 60 form of mathematics, they report today in Historia Mathematica. "This is a whole different way of looking at trigonometry," Mansfield says. "We prefer sines and cosines ... but we have to really get outside our own culture to see from their perspective to be able to understand it."

Also at the University of New South Wales.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The US and North Korea are not the only ones ratcheting up tensions in the Orient. From Japan-Forward[1]:



The armies of India and China are locked in a standoff over the strategic Doklam plateau, an area inside the sovereign territory of Bhutan. Under the purview of the Indian-Bhutan Friendship Treaty, signed in New Delhi in February 2007, the tiny kingdom called in for Indian help after the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) moved in under orders from Beijing.

Asserting dubious claims and then engaging in bullying and revisionism to get its way—this is now becoming an oft-repeated Chinese pattern we have all seen before.

Indeed, in the offensive launched in June 2017 in the Doklam plateau—which China now claims is a “traditional pasture for Tibetans” (ignoring completely the fact that China predicates the claim in Doklam upon its equally untenable claim over Tibet)—China attempted to build a road near the critical tri-junction border area among China, India, and Bhutan. This area is vital to India’s security.

In the specific case of Doklam, there is a fascinating twist to the tale. China did not foresee India’s tenacious military resistance and political fortitude in response to the PLA’s Doklam encroachment. Unlike the Scarborough Shoal, where Filipino forces quit without a fight, India appears very unlikely to withdraw its troops unilaterally from the Doklam border area, and is standing up to China.

China and India are the first and second largest world militaries, perhaps it would be wise to heed the sage advice.
[1]:Japan-Forward is the English-language publication of the Sankei Shimbun, a large Japanese newspaper with an open Nationalist slant.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Microsoft sparked fury when it aggressively pushed its Windows 10 operating system onto people's PCs – from unexpected downloads to surprise installations.

Now a consumer rights group has forced Redmond to promise it will never do it again, in Germany at least.

In 2015, Microsoft offered existing Windows 7 and 8 users a free upgrade to its new cloud-friendly OS, and rapidly become increasingly ambitious about getting it onto machines. After bundling the upgrade alongside its monthly security patches and resorting to tricky tactics, loads of users found they were downloading gigabytes of unwanted Redmond code.

This riled a lot of folks, but Germany – one of the few countries that takes consumer rights seriously – actually took action. The Consumer Center in Baden-Württemberg filed a cease-and-desist complaint against Redmond regarding the practice, and the software giant has unexpectedly caved and promised never to do it again.

"We would have wished for an earlier introduction, but the levy is a success for more consumer rights in the digital world," said Cornelia Tausch, CEO of the Center.

Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/23/microsoft_windows_10_updates_germany/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Docker is a great tool. But Docker containers are not a cure-all. If you really want to understand how Docker is impacting the channel, you have to understand its limitations.

Docker containers have become massively popular over the past several years because they start faster, scale more easily and consume fewer resources than virtual machines.

But that doesn't mean that Docker containers are the perfect solution for every type of workload. Here are examples of things Docker can't do or can't do well:

• Run applications as fast as a bare-metal server.
• Provide cross-platform compatibility.
• Run applications with graphical interfaces.
• Solve all your security problems.

I kinda miss just running services directly on physical servers. Guess I'm getting old.

Source: http://thevarguy.com/open-source/when-not-use-docker-understanding-limitations-containers

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

After the US Department of Justice demanded from DreamHost data that could identify visitors of anti-Trump website Disruptj20.org and the web host refused to comply with such an unreasonably broad request for data, the DOJ narrowed the scope of its demand by excluding unpublished media and HTTP access and error logs from it.

On Thursday, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Robert Morin ruled that DreamHost must comply with the narrowed warrant, but has further limited the government's access to the asked-for data, in order to limit exposure of sensitive user information.

He has asked the federal prosecutors to present a list of investigators who will have access to the data and list of methods they will be using to go through it to find information pertinent to their investigation. The investigation aims to find out who's responsible for property damage in downtown Washington during the Inauguration Day protests.

"The production of evidence from this trove of data will be overseen by the court. The DOJ is not permitted to perform this search in a bubble. It is, in fact, now required to make its case with the court to justify why they believe information acquired is or is not responsive to (aka: 'covered by') the warrant," DreamHost explained.

Good. It's about time the judiciary started saying no to executive overreach.

Source: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2017/08/25/judge-limits-dojs-search-anti-trump-website-data/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

For four consecutive quarters up through May, Samsung has dominated the home appliances market. With the announcement of the Galaxy Note 8 and its expanded Bixby capabilities such as Quick Commands (using small phrases to perform multiple actions simultaneously), as well as the global rollout of Bixby voice in English to over 200 countries earlier this week, Samsung is making a firm statement: that its Bixby AI, whether you want it or not, is here to stay.

But taking advantage of its success in the home appliances market involves staying ahead, and to do that, there must be a new perspective from which to approach the market. Since Bixby is an 8-year labor of love for the Korean giant, and the voice assistant has now rolled out to mobile devices, bringing the new AI to the home is the next best thing. To this end, Samsung says that it looks to expand Bixby and voice assistant capabilities to smart home appliances by 2020.

This means that Bixby will be used to control the home through Samsung Connect. Samsung's Family Hub refrigerator already utilizes Bixby to perform certain commands (Samsung rolled out Bixby via a software update to the Family Hub 2.0 refrigerator back in May), but the Family Hub will be used to call robot vacuum cleaners to the kitchen or turn on the washing and drying machines (as the Family Hub will control the kitchen setting). Samsung Connect will be used to tie the entire home together, as home automation dictates.

Source: https://www.tizenexperts.com/2017/08/samsung-expand-bixby-voice-recognition-features-smart-home-appliances-2020/

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Welcome, new trolls! We're pleased as punch to have you aboard, unfortunately as you may have noticed our moderators are unable to give you the moderations you've been working so hard for. Since we can't really do much about people not moderating more, we're going to be giving out more points so that the ones that do can give you the attention you so desperately crave.

Moderators: Starting a little after midnight UTC tonight, everyone will be getting ten points a day instead of five. The threshold for a mod-bomb, however, is going to remain at five. This change is not so you can pursue an agenda against registered users more effectively but so we can collectively handle the rather large uptick in anonymous trolling recently while still being able to have points remaining for upmodding quality comments. This is not an invitation to go wild downmodding; it's helping you to be able to stick to the "concentrate more on upmodding than downmodding" bit of the guidelines.

Also, this is not a heavily thought-out or permanent change. It is a quick, dirty adjustment that will be reviewed, tweaked, and likely changed before year's end. Questions? Comments?

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

iOS 10.3.2, which Apple released in mid-May, patches seven AVEVideoEncoder vulnerabilities and one IOSurface flaw discovered by Adam Donenfeld of mobile security firm Zimperium. The security holes, which Apple says can be used by an application to gain kernel privileges, are believed to affect all prior versions of the iOS operating system.

The vulnerabilities are tracked as CVE-2017-6979, CVE-2017-6989, CVE-2017-6994, CVE-2017-6995, CVE-2017-6996, CVE-2017-6997, CVE-2017-6998 and CVE-2017-6999. The bugs were discovered between January 24 and March 20, when they were reported to Apple.

Donenfeld, who disclosed his findings this week at the Hack in the Box security conference in Singapore, said he identified the vulnerabilities while analyzing iOS kernel modules. His analysis led to a little-known module, called AppleAVE, which appeared to lack basic security.

Donenfeld demonstrated how some of the flaws in AppleAVE and IOSurface, which can lead to denial-of-service (DoS), information disclosure and privilege escalation, can be chained to achieve arbitrary read/write and root access. The exploit is said to bypass all iOS security mitigations.

"These vulnerabilities would allow elevation of privileges which ultimately can be used by the attacker to take complete control over affected devices," the researcher said in a blog post.

We really need to standardize TLA definitions. PoC confused me for about half a second in the original headline [Ed: changed it to avoid further confusion here].

Source: http://www.securityweek.com/poc-released-dangerous-ios-kernel-exploit

Original Submission