Non-IT News Thread
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Facebook is a law-breaking “digital gangster,” UK government report says
UK shouldn't let Facebook "evade all editorial responsibility," lawmakers say.
Facebook yesterday said it is willing to face "meaningful regulation" after UK lawmakers accused the company of acting like a "digital gangster" that has knowingly violated laws and helped spread Russian misinformation during elections.
A House of Commons committee that oversees media policy chastised Facebook in a report on "disinformation and 'fake news.'"
"Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like 'digital gangsters' in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law," the report said.
"Facebook's handling of personal data, and its use for political campaigns, are prime and legitimate areas for inspection by regulators, and it should not be able to evade all editorial responsibility for the content shared by its users across its platforms," the report also said.
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If you call this firm a “patent troll,” it might sue for defamation
New Hampshire defamation case has significant free speech implications.
We're not going to say that Automated Transactions LLC is a "patent troll," but several others have. The American Bankers Association has called ATL a troll. The Credit Union National Association called ATL a troll—they even illustrated the accusation with a picture of a troll. Individual lawyers, legal commentators, and banks have all described ATL as a troll.
Inventor and ATL founder David Barcelou got so fed up with people labeling his firm a patent troll that he sued about a dozen individuals and organizations for libel in 2016. Last year, a New Hampshire state judge dismissed Barcelou's lawsuit.
And on Thursday, February 14, the New Hampshire Supreme Court heard oral arguments about whether to overrule the lower court's decision and allow the lawsuit to move forward.
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Georgia Tech scientists figured out how maggots can eat so much, so fast
A video shows 10,000 maggots consuming a 16-inch pizza in just two hours.
How do the larvae of black soldier flies eat so much, so fast, despite their tiny size? Scientists at Georgia Tech have been studying this "collective feeding" behavior and found that one strategy for maximizing the larvae's feeding rate involves forming maggot "fountains." The scientists described the results in a recent paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, along with an entertaining video showing a swarm of larvae consuming an entire pizza in just two hours.
"This is the first time, as far as I know, that we've really tried to quantify how much they were able to eat, and how they are able to do it," said graduate student and co-author Olga Shishkov, who demonstrated the research on Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, DC. It's not the first time she's had fun demonstrating the maggots' hearty appetite in creative ways: last year, she videotaped the critters devouring a heart-shaped donut for Valentine's Day.
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High-tech toilet seat monitors your heart as you sit on the can
Everybody poops. Cardiologists are counting on it.
Engineers at Rochester Institute of Technology have designed a high-tech toilet seat that effortlessly flushes out data on the state of your cardiovascular system. The tricked-out porcelain throne measures your blood pressure, blood oxygen level, and the volume of blood your heart pumps per beat (stroke volume)—taking readings every time you sit down to catch up on some reading of your own. The engineers, led by David Borkholder, recently published a prototype of the seat in the open-access journal JMIR mHealth and uHealth.
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@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:
Engineers at Rochester Institute of Technology ....
That's my old university.
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Inside the DNSpionage hacks that hijack domains at an unprecedented scale
KrebsOnSecurity details how attackers took control of sensitive domains around the world.
Since the beginning of the year, the US government and private security companies have been warning of a sophisticated wave of attacks that’s hijacking domains belonging to multiple governments and private companies at an unprecedented scale. On Monday, a detailed report provided new details that helped explain how and why the widespread DNS hijackings allowed the attackers to siphon huge numbers of email and other login credentials.
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Nasty code-execution bug in WinRAR threatened millions of users for 14 years
If you're one of the 500 million utility users, now would be a good time to patch.
The vulnerability was the result of an absolute path traversal flaw that resided in UNACEV2.DLL, a third-party code library that hasn’t been updated since 2005. The traversal made it possible for archive files to extract to a folder of the archive creator’s choosing, rather than the folder chosen by the person using the program. Because the third-party library doesn’t make use of exploit mitigations such as address space layout randomization, there was little preventing exploits.
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@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:
Nasty code-execution bug in WinRAR threatened millions of users for 14 years
Who actually uses WinRAR?
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@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:
Nasty code-execution bug in WinRAR threatened millions of users for 14 years
Who actually uses WinRAR?
I keep forgetting that it was a thing.
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@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:
Nasty code-execution bug in WinRAR threatened millions of users for 14 years
Who actually uses WinRAR?
I keep forgetting that it was a thing.
Right? It's like people who actually bought WinZip.
http://thedoghousediaries.com/dhdcomics/2012-10-29-1c3a818.png
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@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:
Nasty code-execution bug in WinRAR threatened millions of users for 14 years
Who actually uses WinRAR?
I keep forgetting that it was a thing.
Dell still uses it on self extracting files sometimes...
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iirc WinZip used to have notifications if you used the free version that said something to the affect of "WinZip is not free software, please consider buying it"
Does anyone else remember that?
I do, at least because I would remove WinZip and install 7Zip
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@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
WinZip used to have notifications if you used the free version that said something to the affect of "WinZip is not free software, please consider buying it"
I remember that.
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@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
iirc WinZip used to have notifications if you used the free version that said something to the affect of "WinZip is not free software, please consider buying it"
Does anyone else remember that?
I do, at least because I would remove WinZip and install 7Zip
I first ran into WinZip in the mid 90s, when it was the only good compression program for Windows (or so everyone thought at the time, too bad for them.)
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Microsoft, Paradox allow open game modding on Xbox One for the first time
No pre-approval needed for player-made content on Microsoft's console.
This isn't the first time players have been able to add their own modified content to a console game. Bethesda enabled Fallout 4 mods on Xbox One back in May 2016 and on PlayStation 4 months later. Paradox itself followed with a similar modding program for the Xbox One version of Cities: Skylines early last year.
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Norway’s beautiful but treacherous road
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190219-norways-beautiful-but-treacherous-road -
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
Norway’s beautiful but treacherous road
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190219-norways-beautiful-but-treacherous-roadI have to drive that
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@wrx7m said in Non-IT News Thread:
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
Norway’s beautiful but treacherous road
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190219-norways-beautiful-but-treacherous-roadI have to drive that
IKR, totally my thing.
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Boring office wellness alternatives that actually work
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190215-three-trendy-workplace-perks-and-three-boring-ones-that-work -
Bangladesh fire: Blaze kills dozens in Dhaka historic district
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-47314098
