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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 16 Issue 46
Volume 16, Issue 46 Atari Online News, Etc. November 14, 2014
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2014
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
Fred Horvat
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1646 11/14/14
~ Google Scraps Barges! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Tor Project Puzzled!
~ Hacker: Weak Password! ~ Facebook's "Unfollow"! ~ New Raspberry Pi Out!
~ People Losing Control? ~ WireLurker Is Limited! ~ Facebook To Be Video?
~ More Facebook Privacy? ~ Unicorn Bug Since 1995 ~ Firefox Turns 10!
-* US Falls Behind in Internet? *-
-* "Atari Dump" Documentary To Be Free *-
-* Obama Calls for Tougher Internet Regulation *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Well, the "Polar Vortex" is firmly in place here in New England! While this
is not an unusual phenomenon, it is making national news. Yes, the cold air
has dropped down to the "Lower 48". Yes, parts of the country have been hit
with some snow (yep, we had a little here this morning!). Is this a sign of
things to come this winter - who knows?! I hope not; I'd love to experience
a fairly mild winter like we did last year, but we'll just have to wait and
see! Fortunately, our new oil furnace is working quite well!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Microsoft Files New Battletoads Trademark!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" "Atari Dump" Documentary Will Be Free!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Microsoft Files New Battletoads Trademark
Microsoft has filed a new trademark application for Battletoads,
suggesting - but absolutely not confirming - that the Xbox company may
be planning to revive the series in some fashion.
The trademark application, spotted by NeoGAF, was filed with the United
States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) on November 5. It covers "game
software" and "online video games."
The Battletoads series was created by British developer Rare, and was
originally released for the NES in 1991. Microsoft acquired Rare in
2002, and the Battletoads series has been dormant for years.
Could the trademark application mean Microsoft is looking to bring
Battletoads back to modern consoles? Maybe, but Microsoft has not
announced any plans to date. Filing a trademark application doesn't
guarantee a future game release, as Microsoft could just be protecting
the name, should it want to make a new game some day.
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE Gaming Online - Online Users Growl & Purr!
"""""""""""""""""""
Xbox-Produced "Atari Dump" Documentary Will Be Free
The upcoming Xbox-produced Atari: Game Over documentary, which promises
to tell the untold story of Atari and the ill-fated launch of E.T., will
premiere next week, and it won't cost you a penny.
Microsoft announced today that the movie will debut November 20 on Xbox
360, Xbox One, and PC through video.xbox.com. It will be free on all
platforms; you don't need an Xbox Live Gold subscription.
The movie features interviews with the creator of E.T., Howard Warshaw,
other Atari employees. The film will also feature footage from the dig
that unearthed the buried copies of the game back in April.
Atari: Game Over was directed by Zak Penn, who has written for movies
such as The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk, and various X-Men films.
Some of the excavated E.T. copies were recently sold on eBay, fetching
more than $1,500.
Atari: Game Over was developed under the Xbox Entertainment Studios
banner, a unit responsible for original Xbox programming. The division
was short-lived, as Microsoft recently announced the studio's closure.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Obama Calls for Tougher Internet Regulation
President Barack Obama on Monday embraced a radical change in how the
government treats Internet service, coming down on the side of consumer
activists who fear slower download speeds and higher costs but angering
Republicans and the nation's cable giants who say the plan would kill
jobs.
Obama called on the Federal Communications Commission to more heavily
regulate Internet providers and treat broadband much as it would any
other public utility.
He said the FCC should explicitly prohibit Internet providers like
Verizon and AT&T from charging data hogs like Netflix extra to move
their content more quickly. The announcement sent cable stocks tumbling.
The FCC, an independent regulatory body led by political appointees, is
nearing a decision on whether broadband providers should be allowed to
cut deals with the content providers but is stumbling over the legal
complexities.
"We are stunned the president would abandon the longstanding, bipartisan
policy of lightly regulating the Internet and calling for extreme"
regulation, said Michael Powell, president and CEO of the National Cable
and Telecommunications Association, the primary lobbying arm of the
cable industry, which supplies much of the nation's Internet access.
This "tectonic shift in national policy, should it be adopted, would
create devastating results," added Powell, who chaired the FCC during
the Bush administration until 2005.
Consumer groups and content providers hailed Obama's move, with Netflix
posting to its Facebook page that "consumers should pick winners and
losers on the Internet, not broadband gatekeepers."
"Net neutrality" is the idea that Internet service providers shouldn't
block, slow or manipulate data moving across its networks. As long as
content isn't against the law, such as child pornography or pirated
music, a file or video posted on one site will load generally at the
same speed as a similarly sized file or video on another site.
In 2010, the FCC embraced the concept in a rule. But last January, a
federal appeals court struck down the regulation because the court said
the FCC didn't technically have the legal authority to tell broadband
providers how to manage their networks.
The uncertainty has prompted the public to file some 3.7 million comments
with the FCC more than double the number filed after Janet Jackson's
infamous wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl.
On Monday, Obama waded into the fray and gave a major boost to Internet
activists by saying the FCC should explicitly ban any "paid
prioritization" on the Internet. Obama also suggested that the FCC
reclassify consumer broadband as a public utility under the 1934
Communications Act. That would mean the Internet would be regulated more
heavily in the way phone service is.
"It is common sense that the same philosophy should guide any service
that is based on the transmission of information whether a phone call,
or a packet of data," Obama said.
This approach is exactly what industry lobbyists have spent months
fighting against. While Internet providers say they support the concept
of an open Internet they want flexibility to think up new ways to package
and sell Internet services. And, given the billions of dollars spent to
improve network infrastructure, some officials say it's only fair to make
data hogs like Netflix bear some of the costs of handling heavy traffic.
AT&T on Monday threatened legal action if the FCC adopted Obama's plan,
while Comcast Corp. said reclassifying broadband regulation would be "a
radical reversal that would harm investment and innovation, as today's
immediate stock market reaction demonstrates." Similar statements were
released by Time Warner Cable Inc. and several industry groups
including CTIA-The Wireless Association, USTelecom, the
Telecommunications Industry Association and Broadband for America.
Many Republicans including House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate
GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sided with industry in denouncing
the plan as government overreach.
"'Net Neutrality' is Obamacare for the Internet," declared Sen. Ted Cruz,
R-Texas, a tea party favorite, on Twitter. "The Internet should not
operate at the speed of government."
The Internet Association, which represents many content providers like
Netflix, Twitter, eBay and Google, applauded Obama's proposal.
On Monday, as the Standard & Poor's 500 index edged up slightly, big
cable companies slid. Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Cablevision and Charter
Communications dropped 2 percent to 4 percent in the hours immediately
after the announcement.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a former industry lobbyist and venture
capitalist, has said he is open to using a "hybrid" approach that would
draw from both Title II of the 1934 law and the 1996 Telecommunications
Act. On Monday, Wheeler said he welcomed the president's comments, but
suggested that his proposal was easier said than done.
"The more deeply we examined the issues around the various legal options,
the more it has become plain that there is more work to do," Wheeler
said. "The reclassification and hybrid approaches before us raise
substantive legal questions. We found we would need more time to examine
these to ensure that whatever approach is taken, it can withstand any
legal challenges it may face."
The FCC isn't under a deadline to make a decision.
The president's statement all but guarantees that the major cable
companies will spend the next few months trying to encourage Congress to
step in to protect their interests. Still, Internet activists are hoping
that Obama's position will go a long way, even as his popularity among
his party has waned.
"When the leader of the free world says the Internet should remain free,
that's a game changer," said Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass.
U.S. FCC Chairman Says 'Must Take The Time' on Net Neutrality Rules
U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler on Monday
welcomed President Barack Obama's comments on his work on new Internet
traffic, or "net neutrality," rules, saying the agency "must take the
time" to set the rules once and for all. Obama on Monday pressured the
FCC to toughen its planned Internet traffic rules, saying higher-fee
"fast lanes" should be banned and Internet providers should be overseen
similarly to public utilities. Wheeler reiterated that he, too, opposed
Internet fast lanes or traffic prioritization deals that may harm
consumers. "The more deeply we examined the issues around the various
legal options, the more it has become plain that there is more work to
do," he said in a statement. "The reclassification and hybrid
approaches before us raise substantive legal questions. ... We must
take the time to get the job done correctly, once and for all, in order
to successfully protect consumers and innovators online."
Tech Companies Need To Get Off The Sidelines and Start Loudly
Supporting Net Neutrality Right Now
After the president announced his plan to ensure net neutrality by
reclassifying broadband providers as utilities, my inbox predictably got
flooded with hysterical missives from carriers who are warning that
forcing them to abide by net neutrality rules would completely destroy
the Internet as we know it. Soon afterward, many congressmen and
senators started piling on and declaring that this new net neutrality
plan was an Obamacare for the Internet, as Texas Republican Ted Cruz
put it.
If things keep playing out this way, then everyone in America will soon
see this story as one of the government wanting to control a vital
industry just for the sake of exerting its own power. This would be
tragic because net neutrality isnt really an issue of
government-versus-business so much as its an issue of
business-versus-business.
Or more specifically, its an issue of whether one kind of business can
use its unique economic leverage to extract added rents from another type
of business in exchange for giving its traffic priority treatment, which
would also put smaller tech companies that cant afford fast lane fees
at a permanent disadvantage.
The good news here is that there are many high-profile businesses who
have claimed in the past to support strong net neutrality rules since
theyre not eager to pay ISPs extra tolls in exchange for preferential
treatment. And by high-profile, Im referring to Google, Apple,
Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and many, many more.
If any plan to implement net neutrality regulations is to survive the
barrage of propaganda thats going to be leveled against it, then these
tech firms need to speak up and make their voices heard on this matter
right now and explain to their users why net neutrality is so important
to the future of the online economy.
And lets be clear: If these companies came together to put even a
fraction of the effort into supporting net neutrality that the big
telcos and cable companies are putting into killing net neutrality, then
they would almost certainly win in the court of public opinion.
Why? Because most tech companies are loved by their customers while most
wireless and (especially) cable companies are not. In a battle over
public trust, the people who bring you your iPhone, your Xbox, Google
Maps and Amazon Prime are going to demolish the people who slap you with
overage fees for exceeding monthly data caps and who employ customer
service representatives that are only slightly less terrifying than
Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.
So now is the time to start putting your considerable money where your
mouths are, tech companies. Because if you dont, youll soon be cursing
your fate every time you have to pay Comcast a paid prioritization fee
to ensure your traffic gets delivered as quickly as your rivals does.
FCC May Give Us Internet Fast Lanes No Matter What Obama Says
President Obama this week caused quite a stir when he came out in favor
of a bold plan to protect net neutrality that would involve reclassifying
ISPs as common carriers. Unfortunately for net neutrality advocates,
Obama doesnt get the final say when it comes to this issue. Instead,
that honor goes to the Federal Communications Commission, which is
headed by a former cable lobbyist that Obama decided to appoint as
chairman last year.
The Washington Post brings us word that Obamas newly unveiled net
neutrality plan isnt going to change what the FCC does one bit and that
the commission might just go through with its plan to allow ISPs to
charge more money to companies to make sure their traffic gets delivered
faster no matter what.
Huddled in an FCC conference room Monday with officials from major Web
companies, including Google, Yahoo and Etsy, agency Chairman Tom Wheeler
said he preferred a more nuanced solution, the Post reports. His
approach would deliver some of what Obama wants but also would address
the concerns of the companies that provide Internet access to millions
of Americans, such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable and AT&T.
Wheeler also reportedly told these tech companies that hes trying to
figure out the best way to split the baby, although that cant be too
comforting when the baby being split is the open Internet. The FCC is an
independent agency, however, and its under no obligation to listen to
the president, congressmen or anyone else in the government. No matter
what anyone wants, the FCC might still give us Internet fast lanes.
People Feel Loss of Control of Personal Info
It's been 15 years since Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy infamously
quipped "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." You'd think we
would have gotten the message by now, with all the news of online data
breaches, revelations about broad government surveillance, and
advertisers tracking your every move as you travel around the Web.
But we're not over it. We just don't know what to do about it.
That's the finding of a new Pew Research Center survey, which revealed
that nearly all Americans surveyed feel they've lost control over how
companies collect and use their personal information.
"It's a trade-off," said Bill Scully, 47, from Boston, while waiting for
a train inside New York's Penn Station. When you sign up for Google
Inc.'s Gmail, for example, you get free email in exchange for letting the
company target ads to you, he said. "The same with Facebook. When you
sign up for Facebook, you are basically signing up for a big marketing
survey."
The survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet Project asked 607 U.S.
adults about their privacy perceptions following Edward Snowden's
exposure of government surveillance programs last year. The study found
that most have "little confidence" in the security of communications
tools ranging from social media sites to phones, and less than a quarter
think that it is easy to be anonymous online.
Some 81 percent said they don't feel secure using social networking
sites when they want to share private information. More than half of
respondents are insecure emailing or texting private details, such as
health issues. And 80 percent of those who use social networking sites
like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are concerned about advertisers and
businesses accessing the information they share on the sites.
Two-thirds of them think the government should do more to regulate those
advertisers.
Asked if he feels that his information is secure online, Jeff Ji, from
New Jersey, answered with an emphatic "no." He said he has had his
credit card information breached, and is familiar with advertisers
tracking his movements online. That said, he thinks that people have
"no choice in the matter" if they want to use email or social media,
even if it means sharing private information.
"Everyone uses it. It's a huge network and (we) need it to communicate
with others," he said.
Since its 2004 launch, Facebook's user base has skyrocketed to more than
1.35 billion, despite ongoing user concerns about what happens to the
vast trove of information that is shared on the site, albeit for free.
Facebook uses people's likes, hometown, hobbies and movements around the
Web to target ads to them, though it emphasizes that advertisers aren't
privy to any information that could personally identify a user. Other
free sites teeming with personal information include LinkedIn, where
300 million members have filled out pages with employment details and
contacts. Users need to take steps to opt out of behavior tracking if
they don't want to receive targeted ads.
Many people are OK with that 55 percent of the survey's respondents
said they are willing to share some personal information so they can use
online services for free. "You're not paying for privacy," notes
Priscilla Granger, 28, also from New Jersey. But nearly two-thirds of
those polled don't think giving away all those personal details actually
make websites and online services "more efficient." And the same number
say they want to make a bigger effort to protect their privacy.
Pew plans to conduct four surveys on the topic over the course of a year.
This report is based on the first survey, which was conducted Jan. 11-28
among a representative online panel of 607 adults. Although the panel
was conducted online, Internet access was provided to respondents
without it. The sampling error is 3.98 percent.
Americans Leery of Online Privacy in Post-Snowden Era
Ever since NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden began unleashing details of
US government surveillance programs, Americans have become increasingly
worried about both the government and businesses tracking them online.
Thats according to a study published today by the Pew Research Center,
which found that a majority of Americans believe their privacy is being
challenged and that they are losing the ability to secure their personal
information and retain confidentiality.
The survey, which was conducted in January, found that roughly 8 in 10
adults are concerned about the governments monitoring of phone calls and
Internet communications, while some 91 percent of adults feel like
theyve lost control over how personal information is collected and used
by companies.
Social media is no better, as 80 percent of adults say they are worried
about the access that advertisers and other companies have to their
personal data. Seventy percent of respondents said they worried that
government agencies might access and track personal information about
them on social networking sites.
But here exists the paradox: More than half of respondents said they were
willing to share their personal information in order to use online
services for free, even though distrust in advertisers remains widespread.
As for the impact that the Snowden revelations have had on how Americans
perceive their privacy, it seems as though the more people know, the more
distrust they tend to have.
"Americans' lack of confidence in core communications channels tracks
closely with how much they have heard about government surveillance
program," the Pew report stated.
Yet in spite of the overall public concern about government surveillance,
64 percent believe the government should do more to regulate advertisers'
access to their data online.
Congressional Committee Meeting To Discuss Privacy in Wake of Recent Nude Leaks
A congressional advisory committee will be taking the initial step
Thursday to discuss the legal ramifications of protecting Internet
privacy. Prompted by the recent hacks resulting in the leak of nude photos
of celebrities like the high profile case involving actress Jennifer
Lawrence, the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee will be
discussing the topic of privacy and the legal remedies against hackers,
websites, and those partaking in revenge porn.
In a session titled "Jennifer Lawrence's Hacked Photos: A "Sex Crime?" The
Legal Underpinnings of Digitally Exposed Private Images and What Congress
Needs to Know" the advisory committee, which is comprised of members of
the private sector and is not a government body, will be asking what
remedies, if any at all, ordinary citizens will have against people who
hack, leak, or peddle private photos.
To engage the public and gain coverage, the committee will be using the
hashtag #exposedphotos on Twitter, so be sure to join in on the
discourse.
Feds Hacked: Is Cybersecurity A Bigger Threat Than Terrorism?
While the terrestrial fears of terrorism and Ebola have dominated
headlines, American leaders are fretting about what may be even more
serious virtual threat s to the nations security.
This year, hundreds of millions of private records have been exposed in
an unprecedented number of cyberattacks on both US businesses and the
federal government.
On Monday, just as President Obama arrived in Beijing to being a
week-long summit with regional leaders, Chinese hackers are suspected to
have breached the computer networks of the US Postal Service, leaving the
personal data of more than 800,00 employees and customers compromised,
The Washington Post reports.
The data breach, which began as far back as January and lasted through
mid-August, potentially exposed 500,000 postal employees most sensitive
personal information, including names, dates of birth, and Social
Security numbers, the Postal Service said in a statement Monday. The
data of customers who used the Postal Services call center from January
to August may have also been exposed.
"The FBI is working with the United States Postal Service to determine
the nature and scope of this incident," the federal law enforcement
agency said in a statement Monday. Neither the FBI nor the Postal
Service, however, confirmed it was the work of Chinese hackers.
The breach did not expose customer payment or credit card information,
the Postal Service said, but hackers did gain access to its computer
networks at least as far back as January. The FBI informed the Postal
Service of the hack in mid-September.
It is an unfortunate fact of life these days that every organization
connected to the Internet is a constant target for cyber intrusion
activity, said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe in a statement. The
United States Postal Service is no different. Fortunately, we have seen
no evidence of malicious use of the compromised data and we are taking
steps to help our employees protect against any potential misuse of
their data.
But the reported breach comes as both intelligence officials and
cybersecurity experts say computer hackers now pose a greater threat to
national security than terrorists.
Since 2006, cyber-intruders have gained access to the private data of
nearly 90 million people in federal networks, the Associated Press
reported in a major investigation published Monday.
Hackers have also accessed 255 million customer records in retail networks
during this time, 212 million customer records in financial and insurance
industry servers , as well as 13 million records of those in educational
institutions, the AP reported.
The increasing number of cyber-attacks in both the public and private
sectors is unprecedented and poses a clear and present danger to our
nations security, wrote Rep. Elijah Cummings (D) of Maryland, ranking
member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in a
letter to Postmaster General Donahoe on Monday.
Still, unlike the well-publicized hacks of businesses like Home Depot and
Target, in which the payment information of nearly 100 million customers
was exposed this year, recent data breaches have puzzled experts.
In October, JPMorgan Chase, the largest US bank, reported that hackers
had compromised the personal contact information of more than 83 million
customers. But even though the hackers, suspected to be from Russia, had
access to numerous servers in JPMorgans systems, they accessed only
personal information lists not accounts or financial data.
Russian hackers were also suspected of being behind a breach of
unclassified White House computers, reported in October as well.
The limited scope of the information that such hackers gained access to
this year may indicate that they are simply exploring system security in
the never-ending chess matches of international espionage and spying,
experts say.
But the battle against highly sophisticated hackers, cybersecurity
experts say, is a 24/7, 365-days-a-year arms race. Its a cat-and-mouse
game as hackers constantly probe a networks defenses, finding
inevitable flaws and weaknesses that system administrators must patch
on a regular, ongoing basis.
This means hackers are usually one step ahead.
"No matter what we do with the technology ... we'll always be vulnerable
to the phishing attack and ... human-factor attacks unless we educate the
overall workforce," Eric Rosenbach, assistant secretary of Defense for
Homeland Defense and Global Security, told the AP.
Tor Project Puzzles Over How The Law Shredded Anonymity in Operation Onymous
When the administrator of Silk Road 2.0 was busted last week, the agent
who penned his indictment was tight-lipped about how, exactly, the FBI
got its hands on the supposedly hidden server the dark net market was
using, saying that the Bureau simply "identified the server located in a
foreign country," and that law enforcement managed to image it sometime
around 30 May 2014.
In or about May 2014, the FBI identified a server located in a foreign
country that was believed to be hosting the Silk Road 2.0 website at the
time (the Silk Road 2.0 Server). On or about May 30, 2014, law
enforcement personnel from that country imaged the Silk Road 2.0 Server
and conducted a forensic analysis of it. Based on posts made to the SR2
Forum, complaining of service outages at the time the imaging was
conducted, I know that once the Silk Road 2.0 server was taken offline
for imaging, the Silk Road 2.0 website went offline as well, thus
confirming that the server was used to host the Silk Road 2.0 website.
That's it. That's all that law enforcement was willing to share about how
it managed to slice through the layers of the Tor network, which is
designed to mask users' identity by means of software that routes
encrypted browsing traffic through a network of worldwide servers.
Now, the keepers of Tor - the nonprofit group The Tor Project - are
trying to puzzle out how identities were laid bare in the farflung,
multi-nation bust, dubbed Operation Onymous, that snared 410+ supposedly
hidden services running 27 markets, including Silk Road 2.0.
The Tor user base doesn't just include bad guys - the drug lords, drug
buyers, illicit arms traffickers, money launderers and child-abuse image
swappers.
It also includes activists and others for whom it's crucial to protect
privacy so as to ensure safety from persecution, be it from oppressive
regimes or dangerous stalkers.
The Tor Project doesn't know how the anonymizing service was foiled, but
it has possibly relevant information it shared on Sunday.
As Tor project executive director Andrew Lewman wrote, in the previous
few days, The Tor Project had received reports that several Tor relays
had been seized by government officials (The Tor Project doesn't know
how or why) - specifically, three Torservers.net systems (used to run
Tor exit nodes) that blinked out of existence.
The "How" of the onion-router slicing has a few possible avenues of
inquiry.
One of those paths involves blaming the unmasked victims themselves for
using inadequate operational security.
This is "the first and most obvious explanation", writes Tor project
executive director Andrew Lewman:
The project has received reports about websites being infiltrated by
undercover agents, while [Benthall's indictment] states various
operational security errors.
Other possibilities Lewman suggested:
SQL injection. Lewman notes that many of the sites discovered in
Operation Onymous were likely "quickly-coded e-shops with a big attack
surface" that could well have been vulnerable to SQL injection.
Bitcoin de-anonymization. Recent research from Cornell University
describes a way to de-anonymize Bitcoin users that allows for the linkage
of user pseudonyms to the IP addresses from which the transactions are
generated, even when used on Tor.
Attacks on the Tor network. Given the number of takedowns and the seizure
of Tor relays, the Tor network was possibly attacked to reveal the
location of the hidden services. Lewman lists a number of attacks that
have been discovered on the Tor network over the past few years - attacks
with the potential aftermath of de-anonymizing previously hidden
services.
In fact, two Carnegie Mellon researchers canceled a Black Hat 2014 talk
about how easy they found it to break Tor.
The researchers claimed that it was possible to "de-anonymize hundreds
of thousands of Tor clients and thousands of hidden services within a
couple of months," and promised to discuss examples of their own work
identifying "suspected child pornographers and drug dealers."
From the original description, before Carnegie-Mellon's lawyers had the
talk yanked from the lineup:
There is nothing to prevent you from using your resources to
de-anonymize the network's users ... by exploiting fundamental flaws in
Tor design and implementation. And you don't need the NSA budget to do
so.
Looking for the IP address of a Tor user? No problem. Trying to uncover
the location of a hidden service? Done. We know because we tested it, in
the wild...
At the time, The Tor Project confirmed that yes, somebody or somebodies
were picking it apart, and the assaults may have unmasked those who run
or visit Tor-hidden sites.
In the meantime, Lewman asks relay operators to get in touch if their
server was recently compromised or they lost control of it.
FBI Most Wanted Hacker Jeremy Hammond Used His Cat's Name for Password
A notorious hacker serving a federal prison sentence revealed that a weak
password - his cat's name - may have led to his downfall.
Jeremy Hammond, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for his role in
cyber attacks against a private defense firm, law enforcement agencies
and what prosecutors called "thousands of innocent individuals," was
able to hack into systems that may have seemed impenetrable to others.
It would be fair to expect a hacker as skilled as Hammond to keep his
private information carefully protected, but instead he told the
Associated Press he used a password that was surprisingly easy:
Chewy 123.
"My password was really weak," he told the AP.
Hammond said he still isn't sure how federal authorities were able to get
into his encryption program and gather evidence that ultimately sent him
to prison, however, he said he wonders if his weak password may have been
the culprit.
The "hacktivist" portrayed his actions as acts of civil disobedience, but
at his sentencing last year Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District
Court for the Southern District of New York said Hammond "hacked into
websites he disagreed with politically."
Facebook Again Tries To Simplify Privacy Policy
One more time, Facebook is trying to simplify its lengthy privacy policy
and make it much shorter to explain how it targets advertisements to
its 1.35 billion users.
The world's largest online social network uses the information people
share on its site, along with the apps they use and the outside websites
they visit, to show them advertisements deemed relevant to them. In the
July-September quarter, Facebook reported nearly $3 billion in
advertising revenue, a 64 percent increase from a year earlier.
Over the years, the company has faced concerns from users and from
government regulators and privacy advocates that its policies are too
complicated. Two years ago, it settled with the Federal Trade Commission
over charges that it exposed details about their users' lives without
getting the required legal consent. Last year, an independent audit that
was part of the settlement found its privacy practices sufficient.
Despite criticisms, Facebook is rare among Internet companies in that it
seeks user input on its privacy policy and tries to put it in plain
English. But it also has a vast trove of data about its users that it
uses to show ads and measure how well they work, among other things.
On Thursday, Facebook introduced a tool called "Privacy Basics," a set of
animated, interactive guides designed to show users how to control what
they share on the site. Tips answer questions such as "How do I delete
something I post on Facebook?" or "What do people who aren't my friends
see when they search for me?"
It also proposed changes to its terms and privacy policy, which it calls
its data policy. The new policy is much shorter and lays out how Facebook
collects data and what it does with it, among other things, in
illustrated subsections.
Users will have seven days until Nov. 20 to comment on the new policy
and the final version will go into effect soon after that.
The move comes as Facebook is testing a tool that lets users buy things
through its site, and ramps up its ad targeting based on users' location.
The new policy ensures that if people use Facebook to make a purchase,
their credit card information will be collected, for example. Meanwhile,
the location information Facebook collects might include where you took a
photo that you share on the site, or the location of your mobile device
using GPS, Bluetooth or WiFi signals.
A recent Pew Research Center poll found that some 80 percent of Americans
who use social networking sites are concerned about third parties, such
as advertisers, accessing data that they share on the sites. At the same
time, most are willing to share some information about themselves in
exchange for using such services for free.
WireLurker, Masque Attack Malware Only A Threat for Users
Who Disable Apple's iOS, OS X Security
Despite headlines fretting of a "new era in OS X and iOS malware,"
Apple's security systems for iOS and OS X are working as intended to
protect users from exposure to the ubiquitous malware affecting open
platforms including Android and Windows. Here's the realistic,
non-sensationalized facts about how safe Apple's users actually are and
how users can remain protected from threats that arise.
Mac and iOS users are protected from viruses and malware by default
unless the user bypasses their security systems, by jailbreaking an iOS
device; by disabling the protections of Mac OS X's GateKeeper; or by
choosing to "Trust" app installs that iOS identifies as being from an
"Untrusted App Developer." Here's how those systems work, and how users
can avoid being tricked into turning off their own security.
"WireLurker," a recent trojan horse attack detailed by Palo Alto
Networks, was blocked in all forms even on Macs with key security
features disabledby Apple within hours.
"We are aware of malicious software available from a download site aimed
at users in China, and we've blocked the identified apps to prevent them
from launching," Apple wrote in a statement last week.
Apple has previously used XProtect to remotely disabled user-installed
Mac malware ("trojan horses," like the Russian Yontoo blocked last year)
or software components with serious potential security vulnerabilities
(such as Oracle Java), nipping problems in the bud before they could
develop into an unmanageable security problem.
XProtect is so effective that the last significant malware issue for Macs
(named Flashback) was a trojan horse masquerading as Adobe Flash Player
that was specifically intended to disable XProtect (although the malware
couldn't actually do this).WireLurker and Masque Attack aren't viral
and can't infect users unless they intentionally disable their security
and manually install apps bypassing Apple's builtin trust verification
systems for iOS and Macs.
Masque Attack, a related exploit that shares one of the vulnerability
vectors exploited by WireLurker, similarly requires users to "Trust" a
request to install software from an unknown source, a step that Apple has
now made effortlessly easy. Fortunately, users who inadvertently trust
such apps from Untrusted Developers can review their iOS Provisioning
Profiles to disable any self-signed certificates they have already
approved.
WireLurker and Masque Attack are not viral and can't infect users unless
they intentionally disable their security and manually install apps
bypassing Apple's builtin trust verification systems for iOS and Macs.
That hasn't stopped sensational blogs from confusing users about how safe
they actually are. Chris Smith, writing for BGR, spent paragraphs trying
to convince readers that a minor distribution of Chinese malware "should
terrify you," even though the identified malware has been circulating
for months in China without actually delivering a real payload of
malware outside of the wide open world of jailbroken devices.
Mac and iOS users have no need to be "terrified," but should understand
in general terms how Apple's security systems work so they can't be
fooled into installing malware. This is becoming a more complex issue
because Apple now makes it easier than ever to bypass security on iOS,
although it still requires an explicit "Trust" approval from the user.
Ironically, just two years ago the Electronic Frontier Foundation was
demonizing the on-by-default security of iOS and OS X as "Apple's
Crystal Prison" and an "elaborate misdirection," and called upon the
company to provide a "simple, documented, and reliable way to drill into
a settings menu, unlatch the gate of the crystal prison, and leave."
Evil 'Unicorn' 0-day Windows Bug Lurking Since 1995: Patch It Now!
Researcher Robert Freeman has identified an 18-year-old, critical
remotely-exploitable hole affecting all versions of Windows all the way
back to Windows 95.
The vulnerability (CVE-2014-6332) rated a critical score of 9.3 in all
versions of Windows and was described as a rare "unicorn-like" bug in
Internet Explorer-dependent code that opens avenues for man in the middle
attacks.
The bug bypasses Redmond's lauded Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit
along with Enhanced Protected Mode sandbox in the flagship browser and
was patched today some six months after it was reported, IBM's Freeman
said.
"This complex vulnerability is a rare, 'unicorn-like' bug [that can be
used by an attacker for drive-by attacks to reliably run code remotely
and take over the users machine," Freeman said.
"In this case, the buggy code is at least 19 years old and has been
remotely exploitable for the past 18 years.
"In some respects, this vulnerability has been sitting in plain sight for
a long time despite many other bugs being discovered and patched in the
same Windows library (OleAut32)."
Freeman said it was a "matter of time" before corresponding attacks
surfaced in the wild.
It was the inclusion of VBScript in Internet Explorer that made the
browser the most likely candidate for an attackers, Freeman said.
The discovery of the vulnerability could lead researchers an attackers to
probe for more data manipulation bugs which may have been equally
overlooked by security types.
"These data manipulation vulnerabilities could lead to substantial
exploitation scenarios from the manipulation of data values to remote
code execution," he said.
It was difficult to exploit the bug, plugged as part of Microsoft's Patch
Tuesday that crushed a string of serious holes, in part because array
element sizes were fixed.
The scant opportunity to place arbitrary data where VBScript arrays were
stored on the browser heap and the enforcement of variant type
compatibility matching further complicated attacks.
Attacks could be launched using existing public research including that
described by Freeman.
A separate critical hole (MS14-066) affecting Microsoft's Secure Channel
(SChannel) that implemented Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer
Security protocols was also patched.
That flaw permitted remote code execution in all versions of Windows if
attackers sent crafted packets to Windows servers. The patch fixed
sanitisation issues in Schannel for crafted packets.
Redmond issued 14 patchesto fix holes across Windows, Office, and .NET
while Adobe set out to plug 18 holes in Flash and Air that allowed
attackers to hijack user machines by way of remote code execution.
New Windows Security Bug Leaves PCs Open to Hijackings
If youre reading this on a Windows computer, youve got some
downloading to do.
As reported by Gizmodo, a newly discovered security bug leaves some
Microsoft Windows PCs open to remote hijackings, meaning that someone
else could take control of your computer and do as they wish with the
files on it.
Exactly which Windows systems are affected? Well, its unfortunately a
lot.
According to Microsoft, the affected software includes multiple builds
of Windows Server (2003 and 2008), Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows
8/8.1.
The fix: To be safe, we recommend that all PC users run the Windows
Update program found inside the Windows Control Panel to make sure all
available patches have been downloaded and installed. Microsofts
support site can also offer more info and a direct download for the fix
now.
Raspberry Pi Launches Model A+ Microcomputer With A Price Of Only $20
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is known for creating microcomputers that run
on Linux, have a low cost and are built on a single board. Today the
Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the Model A+ microcomputer, which is
smaller and cheaper than its predecessor.
Here is a breakdown of the specifications of the new Model A+ compared to
some of the other Pi models.
The Model A+ has a starting price of $20 and the Model A predecessor is
$25. The dimensions of the Model A versus the Model A+ are
85.60 mm × 56.50 mm and 65 mm × 56.50 mm, respectively. Other Raspberry
Pi models are known for being roughly the same size as the average
credit card, but the Model A+ is much smaller.
The Model A+ and the Model A have the same Broadcom BRCM +0.78% BCM2835
system-on-a-chip (SoC) clocked at 700MHz. Both also have 256MB of RAM. If
you want to have a Raspberry Pi microcomputer with more RAM, the Model B
series has 512MB of RAM and has a starting cost of $35.
The Model A series of Raspberry Pi devices have only one USB port. If you
want to use more than one USB device, then you will need to have a USB
hub or buy a device in the Model B series. The Model B has 2 USB ports
and the Model B+ has 4 USB ports.
The Model A series of Raspberry Pi devices do not have an Ethernet port.
By cutting out the Ethernet network connection and extra USB ports, the
Model A+ uses drastically lower power than any other Pi model. In fact,
the Model A+ uses between 20-25% less power than the original Model A.
The A+ still has an HDMI port, audio/video jack, camera connector and
microUSB power slot. It also has a DSI display port to connect the
Raspberry Pi touch screen display. And there is a new audio circuit and
power supply that makes the Model A+ run quieter as well.
For storage purposes, a microSD slot has been used in the Model A+ to
replace the SD card slot in other Pi models. The microSD slot in the
Model A+ has a better push-push slot format compared to the old
friction-fit SD card socket used in other models.
The Model A+ has more GPIO pins than its predecessor. The A+ has 40 GPIO
pins and the A has 26. The Model A+ is also compatible with the HAT
(Hardware Attached on Top) standard, meaning that third party add-on
boards can be attached to it. Examples of third party add-on boards
include motor controllers, LEDs, LCDs and DACs.
Last month, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced that they sold 3.8
million total units. That figure is up from 3 million units in June 2014
and 2 million units in October 2013, according to ZDnet.
If you want to purchase a Model A+, they are available at MCM for U.S.
customers and Farnell for U.K. customers.
As Firefox Turns 10, Mozilla Trumpets Privacy
Mozilla pulled out the PR stops to trumpet the 10th anniversary of
Firefox, and in celebration released an interim build of Firefox 33 that
includes a new privacy tool and access to the DuckDuckGo search engine.
Firefox 1.0 was released on Nov. 9, 2004, at a time when Microsoft's
Internet Explorer had a stranglehold on the browser space, having driven
Netscape - Firefox's forerunner in many ways - out of the market two
years before. Mozilla has been widely credited with restarting browser
development, which had been moribund under IE.
Today's Firefox 33.1 offered DuckDuckGo as a new pre-installed search
engine choice, joining Amazon, Bing, Google, Yahoo and others.
"DuckDuckGo gives you search results without tracking who you are or what
you search for," said Johnathan Nightingale, vice president of Firefox,
in a blog post. "Other engines may use tracking to enhance your search
results, but we believe that's a choice you should get to make for
yourself."
Nightingale did not mention Google by name as one of the engines that
"use tracking," but Google is the default search engine for most Firefox
installations. New installations of Firefox 33.1 retain Google as the
default, and current users' choices remain unchanged.
He also called out a new feature, dubbed "Forget," that has been added to
Firefox. "Forget gives you an easy way to tell Firefox to clear out some
of your recent activity," Nightingale wrote.
Forget, which must be added to the toolbar by the user, serves as a
substitute for the more complex private browsing feature - called
"Private Window" in Firefox - and the browser's already-available "Clear
Recent History," which retroactively eliminates traces of where users
have gone and what they've done on the Web.
"Many of our users share a computer with friends or family, and it's easy
to forget to open a private browsing window first; with Forget, clearing
that information is quick, and easy to understand," Nightingale said.
The focus on privacy was not limited to Firefox.
Mozilla's CEO, Chris Beard, also introduced a new project, called
"Polaris," that he described as "a new strategic initiative to bring
together the best and brightest to explore new approaches to enhance
privacy controls online."
Elsewhere, Mozilla spelled out Polaris, which has a pair of partners at
the start: the Tor Project and the Center for Democracy and Technology
(CDT). Mozilla will host its own Tor middle relays, anonymous servers that
receive Tor traffic and pass it along in an effort to improve the Tor
network's overall performance and increase its capacity.
Mozilla also said it is working on another privacy tool that would replace
the lifeless "Do Not Track" initiative with something that "protects those
users that want to be free from invasive tracking without penalizing
advertisers and content sites that respect a user's preferences."
Mozilla had been a strong proponent of Do Not Track, and in 2013 even said
it would take the more drastic step of automatically blocking all
third-party cookies. The latter was scuttled after online advertisers
accused Mozilla of harboring "techno-libertarians and academic elites who
believe in liberty and freedom ... as long as they get to decide the
definitions of liberty and freedom." Instead, Mozilla partnered with
Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society to create something
labeled the "Cookie Clearinghouse," or CCH.
The privacy drumbeat, whether the addition of DuckDuckGo or the
wider-ranging Polaris, seems at odds with Mozilla's primary revenue
source, Google. In 2012, Mozilla's deal with Google produced $274 million
in revenue, or 88% of the organization's total income for the year.
Mozilla's deal with Google will expire before the end of the year: In
December 2011, the companies announced a renewal.
"Mozilla is currently in the midst of negotiations," a company spokesman
said today, but declined to identify the partner or partners it was
negotiating with. "These discussions are subject to traditional
confidentiality requirements and as such, we are not at liberty to
disclose further details at this time."
Complicating matters for Mozilla is the significant decline of Firefox
since the last agreement with Google. According to U.S.-based Net
Applications, Firefox's user share has fallen 36% since December 2011;
Irish measurement vendor StatCounter, meanwhile, said Firefox's usage
share was down 26% during that same period.
Firefox 33.1 for Windows, OS X and Linux can be downloaded from Mozilla's
website. Users of the browser will receive the update automatically.
Why The U.S. Has Fallen Behind in Internet Speed and Affordability
Americas slow and expensive Internet is more than just an annoyance for
people trying to watch Happy Gilmore on Netflix. Largely a consequence
of monopoly providers, the sluggish service could have long-term economic
consequences for American competitiveness.
Downloading a high-definition movie takes about seven seconds in Seoul,
Hong Kong, Tokyo, Zurich, Bucharest and Paris, and people pay as little
as $30 a month for that connection. In Los Angeles, New York and
Washington, downloading the same movie takes 1.4 minutes for people with
the fastest Internet available, and they pay $300 a month for the
privilege, according to The Cost of Connectivity, a report published
Thursday by the New America Foundations Open Technology Institute.
The report compares Internet access in big American cities with access in
Europe and Asia. Some surprising smaller American cities Chattanooga,
Tenn.; Kansas City (in both Kansas and Missouri); Lafayette, La.; and
Bristol, Va. tied for speed with the biggest cities abroad. In each,
the high-speed Internet provider is not one of the big cable or phone
companies that provide Internet to most of the United States, but a
city-run network or start-up service.
The reason the United States lags many countries in both speed and
affordability, according to people who study the issue, has nothing to do
with technology. Instead, it is an economic policy problem the lack of
competition in the broadband industry.
Its just very simple economics, said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia
Law School who studies antitrust and communications and was an adviser to
the Federal Trade Commission. The average market has one or two serious
Internet providers, and they set their prices at monopoly or duopoly
pricing.
London $24
Seoul $28
Paris $31
Tokyo $34
Copenhagen $36
Prague $39
Kansas City $41
Toronto $41
Berlin $42
Dublin $47
Lafayette, La. $50
Washington, D.C. $52
Hong Kong $52
Los Angeles $54
Chattanooga, Tenn. $54
New York City $55
San Francisco $58
Bristol, Va. $60
Mexico City $110
For relatively high-speed Internet at 25 megabits per second, 75 percent
of homes have one option at most, according to the Federal
Communications Commission usually Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T or
Verizon. Its an issue anyone who has shopped for Internet knows well,
and it is even worse for people who live in rural areas. It matters not
just for entertainment; an Internet connection is necessary for people
to find and perform jobs, and to do new things in areas like medicine
and education.
Stop and let that sink in: Three-quarters of American homes have no
competitive choice for the essential infrastructure for 21st-century
economics and democracy, Tom Wheeler, chairman of the F.C.C., said in a
speech last month.
The situation arose from this conundrum: Left alone, will companies
compete, or is regulation necessary?
In many parts of Europe, the government tries to foster competition by
requiring that the companies that own the pipes carrying broadband to
peoples homes lease space in their pipes to rival companies. (That
policy is based on the work of Jean Tirole, who won the Nobel Prize in
economics this month in part for his work on regulation and
communications networks.)
In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission in 2002
reclassified high-speed Internet access as an information service, which
is unregulated, rather than as telecommunications, which is regulated.
Its hope was that Internet providers would compete with one another to
provide the best networks. That didnt happen. The result has been that
they have mostly stayed out of one anothers markets.
When New America ranked cities by the average speed of broadband plans
priced between $35 and $50 a month, the top three cities, Seoul, Hong
Kong and Paris, offered speeds 10 times faster than the United States
cities. (In some places, like Seoul, the government subsidizes Internet
access to keep prices low.)
The divide is not just with the fastest plans. At nearly every speed,
Internet access costs more in the United States than in Europe, according
to the report. American Internet users are also much more likely than
those in other countries to pay an additional fee, about $100 a year in
many cities, to rent a modem that costs less than $100 in a store.
Fallen behind? Third world countries laugh at America's grossly
overpriced, abysmally poor internet service. There is no place on the
planet...
Ah, the joys of the free market: expensive internet and unaffordable
health care. So glad we ain't socialists.
Well, whatever the problem, I'm sure the incoming GOP senate will fix the
problem, because their concern is clearly with the average...
More competition, better technologies and increased quality of service
on wireline networks help to drive down prices, said Nick Russo, a
policy program associate studying broadband pricing at the Open
Technology Institute and co-author of the report.
There is some disagreement about that conclusion, including from Richard
Bennett, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a
critic of those who say Internet service providers need more regulation.
He argued that much of the slowness is caused not by broadband networks
but by browsers, websites and high usage.
Yet it is telling that in the cities with the fastest Internet in the
United States, according to New America, the incumbent companies are not
providing the service. In Kansas City, it comes from Google. In
Chattanooga, Lafayette and Bristol, it comes through publicly owned
networks.
In each case, the networks are fiber-optic, which transfer data
exponentially faster than cable networks. The problem is that installing
fiber networks requires a huge investment of money and work, digging up
streets and sidewalks, building a new network and competing with the
incumbents. (That explains why super-rich Google has been one of the few
private companies to do it.)
The big Internet providers have little reason to upgrade their entire
networks to fiber because there has so far been little pressure from
competitors or regulators to do so, said Susan Crawford, a visiting
professor at Harvard Law School and author of Captive Audience: Telecom
Monopolies in the New Gilded Age.
There are signs of a growing movement for cities to build their own fiber
networks and lease the fiber to retail Internet providers. Some, like San
Antonio, already have fiber in place, but there are policies restricting
them from using it to offer Internet services to consumers. Other cities,
like Santa Monica, Calif., have been laying fiber during other
construction projects.
In certain cities, the threat of new Internet providers has spurred the
big, existing companies to do something novel: increase the speeds they
offer and build up their own fiber networks.
Facebook Now Lets You Unfollow People, Pages, and Groups From One Place
Facebook today announced an update that gives you more control over what
shows up in your News Feed. This functionality falls under what the
social network refers to as feedback for its algorithm.
Previously, if you saw a story youre not interested in or didnt want to
see, you could tap the arrow in the top-right corner of that story to
hide it. Thats not changing, but now when you hide a story, youll be
asked if you want to see less from that person or Page. If you choose to,
you are then given yet another option: You can unfollow them if you dont
want to see any of their stories in your News Feed.
The second part of todays update is that the News Feed settings page has
been updated to let you change what you see. The page now shows a list of
the top people, Pages, and Groups that youve seen in your News Feed over
the past week:
You can choose to sort posts by people, Pages, or Groups, as well as see
an overall summary. You can unfollow any person or entity here as well,
so you dont see their stories in your News Feed. Best of all, you can
see who and what youve unfollowed in the past, in case you forget, and
refollow them if you change your mind.
What you do in News Feed helps determine what you see in News Feed,
Facebook emphasized today. You decide who you want to connect to, and
what Pages and public figures you want to follow.
This is a very welcome update. While Facebooks News Feed uses an
algorithm to figure what stories to show you, its certainly far from
perfect, and users have to make an effort to customize it. Todays
updates wont change the fundamental way that the News Feed works, but
it will give users more power so they can fix it for themselves.
The timing is no surprise. During the companys first Q&A with Mark
Zuckerberg yesterday, in which the CEO said My goal was never to make
Facebook cool, the News Feed was a hot topic.
Users asked why the News Feed doesnt provide an unfiltered view of
everything (content overload is always Facebooks response), or why there
arent easily accessible filters on the main page (Zuckerberg noted that
users can make friend lists but acknowledged the feature is not intuitive
at all). These new features are a step in the right direction, even
though theyre horribly overdue.
Google Scrapped The Mysterious Barges Because of Fire Risk
Googles
mysterious boats faced a horrid situation when they were
destroyed after being taken as a fire hazard. These floating showrooms of
the tech giant were seen in Portland and SF a year ago. The 250 foot
barge of Google were little known by the experts and the people and
hence, they captured acute attention of the media towards self. According
to the rumors, the barges must have cost the company a great amount of
$4 million.
Google answered smartly about the barges and referred them as the
interactive medium to aware people about the new technology. The media
attention, however, turned into a bizarre situation for the barges as
they were called for dismantling and being sold as scrap.
In the beginning, it was thought that the fading away of the barges was
due to money issues. Experts thought that the money involved in the
construction of the barges must have led to the decision of dismantling
them up.
The contractor of Google actually paused the project after the Coast Guard
put forward some fire safety concerns. The acting chief of the
organization wrote in an email, These vessels will have over 5,000
gallons of fuel on the main deck and a substantial amount of combustible
material on board.
Another visiting Coast guard added his concerns regarding the subject and
said that some more safety measure needed to be employed in the case of
people jumping off board on the waterside. The Coast Guard officials
raised their eyebrows over the matter and expressed their concern about
the people with disabilities.
Google had assured the authorities that 150 people could be accommodated
on the barge without any problem but the Coast guard did not buy it.
Gauvin stated in an email, unaware of any measures you plan to use to
actually limit the number of passengers, and while I understand there
is a sense of urgency, I am concerned that significant work has already
been performed without full consent of the Coast Guard.
Portland would have been on the winning side in any case, because they
already collected $400,000 as a property tax. They would also lose out
on some money in tourism due to the dismantling of the barges.
Facebook Will Be Mostly Video in 5 Years, Zuckerberg Says
If you think your Facebook feed has a lot of video now, just wait.
In five years, most of [Facebook] will be video, CEO Mark Zuckerberg
said Thursday during the companys first community town hall, in which
he took questions from the public on a range of topics.
He was responding to a question about whether the growing number of
photos uploaded to Facebook is putting a drag on its infrastructure. But
Facebooks data centers have it covered, he said. The real challenge is
improving the infrastructure to allow for more rich media like video in
peoples feeds.
Zuckerberg took questions from a group of users who were invited to its
headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and people also submitted
questions online.
One of the most popular online question was why Facebook forced users
to download its Messenger app for mobile.
The 30-year-old acknowledged not everyone was thrilled with the change.
Asking everyone in our community to install another app is a big ask,
he said. But Facebook thought it could provide a better, faster
messaging product if it split it off from its own app.
We really believe this is a better experience, Zuckerberg said.
One user in the audience asked him if Facebook is losing its charm or
becoming boring.
The question of Facebook losing its cool gets raised from time to
time, Zuckerberg said, but my goal was never to make Facebook cool,
he said. Instead, he wants it to be a helpful service that just works.
Another asked why he always seems wear the same t-shirts and hoodies.
Zuckerberg said he wants to spend as much time as possible on things
that matter, like how to build products, even if it means thinking
less about what he wears.
Steve Jobs had the same approach, he said.
=~=~=~=
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