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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 17 Issue 13
Volume 17, Issue 13 Atari Online News, Etc. March 27, 2015
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2015
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 #1713 03/27/15
~ Google Promises Glass! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Rogue Certs Warning!
~ Slack Hacked, Exposed! ~ India's IT Act Ruling! ~ Broken Age: Act 2!
~ Greatfire DDoS Attack! ~ More Atari "Re-births'? ~ Google Loses Ruling!
~ Who Gets Free Win 10? ~ Email Tracking Issues! ~ PS4 'Suspend/Resume'!
-* GOP Offers Net Neutrailty Deal *-
-* RadioShack To Sell Customer Data! *-
-* Wikipedia's Challenge to NSA Surveillance! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Last week, we thought that we saw the last of the white stuff, but the
forecast calls for more snow to arrive over the weekend. I could have
sworn that I surrendered a month ago! Enough already! I really don't
mind that our current snowy terrain is dirty; we don't need a new coat
of snow to clean it up!
Lots of interesting news this week, including some more tidbits pertaining
to Atari's gaming heydays. Suer, we'd like to hear more about the
computer side of Atari, but the gaming news always seems to pull the
headlines. Anyway, I think you'll really enjoy them! Other "tech" stuff,
there aee always interesting tidbits to look at, so you should be
satisfied with those angles in case gaming isn't. Or, enjoy it all, I
won't complain!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Broken Age: Act 2 Slated for April!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" PS4 Getting 'Suspend/Resume' for Games!
'Bloodborne' Is Among The PS4's Best!
And much more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Broken Age: Act 2 Dated for April
Double Fine Productions has announced that Broken Age: Act 2 will be
available on April 28th, the same day the full game will also debut on
PS4 and PS Vita.
Act 1 of the adventure game was released over a year ago on PC. The full
Broken Age adventure is coming to PS4 and PS Vita through a partnership
with the PlayStation Third Party Production team and it features cross
buy and cross save.
Broken Age tells the story of Vella and Shay, a girl and boy from
completely different worlds who seem to be leading strangely parallel
lives. Vella has been chosen by her village to have the honor of being
sacrificed to the terrible monster Mog Chothra, but having no interest
in being devoured by a horrible beast, must go against ages old tradition
and make her escape. Meanwhile somewhere in space, Shay is living a
solitary life under the care of a very motherly computer, and whilst his
every need is taken care of in every way imaginable, he wishes for
nothing more than to break free from the monotonous safety of his daily
life, and have some real adventures.
Funded by a record breaking crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, Broken
Age features words, concept art and music from Tim Schafer, Peter Chan,
and Peter McConnell, along with the unique art of Nathan Stapley.
PlayStation 4 Getting 'Suspend/Resume' for Games at Long Last
Sonys PlayStation 4 will finally get a feature users first heard about
at the consoles unveiling in 2013.
Sony will push out a major PlayStation 4 update Thursday that will
include the long-awaited suspend/resume feature, the company confirmed
Wednesday. The update, PlayStation 4 v2.50, will be available for free,
and include some other notable additions, including the ability to back
up hard-drive data to a USB drive and then restore that back to the
PlayStation 4.
But its addition of the suspend/resume feature that might be the most
important. Sony first announced the feature in 2013, promising that it
would allow gamers to pause a game and put the console into rest mode.
After booting the PlayStation 4 back up, gamers could pick up right
where they left off without going through the main menu and choosing
their game.
The addition of such a feature represents a major improvement.
Historically, gamers would either need to save their progress and turn a
console off or leave the console running if they had to leave and wanted
to come back to a title. The suspend/resume feature eliminates those
problems.
According to Sony, suspend/resume will work on nearly all of your PS4
games. The company didnt say which games would not work with the
feature, but now that itll be baked into the console, its likely that
most, if not all, of the games released on the PlayStation 4 would
support it.
The update also includes a range of social features, including improved
ways to find friends and play games with them. Sony has also added new
accessibility options for players with disabilities, allowing them to
customize button assignments, use text-to-speech features, and enlarge
text. PlayStation 4 owners will also be given the option to
automatically install system software updates.
Sonys announcement comes just days after Microsoft previewed its own
upcoming updates to its Xbox One console. Microsofts updates will
include improvements to party chats and the ability to see what the gamer
did to earn an achievement.
Diabolically Difficult 'Bloodborne' Is Among The PS4's Best
Bloodborne is a game about hope.
Its also a game about death. Its about vile monsters smashing, slicing,
clawing, and chewing you to bits. Its about horror, frustration, salty
language, and broken controllers.
What keeps you playing Bloodborne, the incredibly challenging PS4-only
role-playing game crafted by demented developer From Software, is a
spark. Its hard to see, a flicker in the darkness often obscured by the
rage of yet another failed attempt to kill a thing you are clearly in no
shape to kill. But its there, a glimmering beacon, a calm voice telling
you that despite a learning curve shaped like a wall and hours spent
futilely jabbing at creatures so hellish that you vaguely worry about
the mental health of the people who created them, you are going to be
OK.
You are going to win. And its going to feel great.
Fans of From Softwares infamous Souls series, which has rightfully
earned a reputation as being among the most difficult of its generation,
know the value of hope in the face of despair all too well. Its the
secret sauce thats powered an impenetrably obtuse video game franchise
to the heights of critical and commercial acclaim. Its also what makes
Bloodborne one of the best PS4 games yet.
Anyone expecting that Bloodborne would be something of a departure from
Demons Souls and Dark Souls, perhaps a bit more inviting and less
grinding in its difficulty, should prepare for the first of many
disappointments. From its stressful gameplay loop to its online mechanics
to the bright red YOU DIED message that mocks you roughly every 10
minutes, Bloodborne is Dark Souls 3 in all but name.
This time, you play a hunter wandering the once-pleasant city of Yharnam,
now a gothic nightmare in the grip of an epidemic thats transformed its
citizens into horrific creatures. Your task: kill the beasts and restore
order. Crammed with confounding religious overtones and steeped in gore,
the story isnt the star here. But a cohesive narrative isnt the point
of these games, and its all just absurd enough to keep you marching
straight into Bloodbornes fiery video-game baptism.
At its core, Bloodborne plays like any of the past Souls games. You fight
your way through monsters in an effort to locate an elusive
progress-saving bonfire, though now its a progress-saving lamp. Instead
of acquiring souls by killing creatures, you acquire blood echoes,
and when you die, you still have to race back to your corpse to retrieve
them. Get killed on the way there and you lose your earnings forever. The
Groundhog Day, love-it-or-hate-it Souls gameplay flow fight, die, run
back to your cash, forge ahead, die again, start the process anew is
alive and well in Bloodborne.
But Bloodborne carves out its own identity. For example, monsters can now
pick up your lost loot, requiring the additional step of killing whatever
last killed you to get your cash back. Activating a lamp takes you back
to a hub called the Hunters Dream, a safe haven where you can buy and
sell gear, repair and retrofit weapons, and boost your stats.
The biggest change, however, is found out in the field. Bloodborne is a
faster, more aggressive game than Dark Souls II. Hiding behind a shield
as a 20-foot-tall ogre tries to turn you into mush with a club the size
of a Buick isnt an option because you really dont have any shields (I
found one; it was useless). Magic is largely nonexistent, so you cant
stand back and lob fireballs.
No, Bloodborne requires you to get up close and personal, dodging,
back-stepping, staying just out of range of that Buick club as you dart
in and out with your sword/axe/cleaver/hammer. Its a stiff challenge,
requiring tight focus and a steady eye on your stamina meter, but its
also speedier and intrinsically more pleasing than standing back and
firing arrows.
From Software also made a few concessions to keep you in the fight. You
regain some health by immediately attacking the enemy who last injured
you. You can also equip a gun as a secondary weapon, but dont expect to
rip through Bloodborne with a bazooka. The guns serve mainly to stun
tougher foes, opening them up for a big Visceral Attack that doles out
huge damage. Good luck pulling it off regularly, though, because the
only way to nail the timing is to figure it out on your own.
Part of the problem and this is obviously by design, so maybe its not
a problem so much as a fact is that Bloodborne doesnt believe in
handholding tutorials. It walks you very quickly through its mechanics
and doesnt care to re-explain itself. How does the Frenzy work? Where
do I go to I equip these runes? Whats the secret to stunning foes with
guns? Its up to you to sort it all out.
While its unclear in its systems, Bloodborne is sharply focused in its
macabre sensibilities. The werewolves, zombies, giants, and giant
werewolf zombies are meticulously built and thoroughly creepy, to a one.
The game keeps upping the awful ante; after a few dozen hours, youll
duel snake-headed monstrosities, acid-spitting octo-things, and a
numbers of creatures so gross and insane that despite decades spent
ogling Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manuals, I couldnt describe them on
a bet.
Invariably, Bloodbornes many roads lead to epic boss fights. Youll need
to beat the bosses to open up new paths and acquire new abilities and
true to form, the towering white wolf demon and electrically charged
bear-skeleton thing are as wildly difficult as they look. But this is
where Bloodborne really sinks its teeth into you.
If the multitude of regular monsters are weekly tests, Bloodbornes
bosses are its final exams, and you need to study if you want to pass.
The first time you fight a boss, youre going to die. But youll learn a
thing or two, and eventually youll learn enough to know that despite
the limited window to hit the beast in the foot, you can hit it in the
foot. You just have to go do it.
Thats the hope talking, and when it all comes together, its
intoxicating. After a couple of hours spent banging my head against the
games first tree-limbed behemoth of a boss, I dodged, leaped, parried,
and stabbed it just enough times to kill it before it killed me. I took
a victory lap around the house, arms raised. True, beyond Bloodbornes
hills lie only bigger hills, but when youve climbed one hill, you know
you can climb more. You want to climb more.
Most of Bloodborne is spent this way: scouring its vast environments for
hidden treasures and secret paths, stumbling upon something terrible,
getting killed by it, and jogging back for a little revenge. Its
repetitive, to be sure, and often the best way forward is to spend time
farming the weaker bad guys for cash. Youll doubtlessly fling a
controller across the room when you do something stupid and lose 45,000
blood echoes. But youre not mad at the game so much as at yourself. You
should have been patient. You should have spent that cash when you had
the chance. You should have been smarter. Fools rush into Bloodborne,
and death rushes back out.
Fools also forget that Bloodborne has a multiplayer component. You can
leave messages for fellow hunters (another holdover from the Souls
games), and you can also invite players into your game to help take down
bosses. Its still a little wonky you need to ring a bell, which costs
yet another poorly explained currency called Insight, and then wait
for someone to (maybe) come join you but it does work, and it can be
immensely useful when youre out of ideas. If you also run out of things
to kill (you), Bloodborne offers cool procedurally generated dungeons,
which can also be played cooperatively. And for gamers looking to show
off their skills, the game lets players invade each others worlds and
go mano a mano.
Its a big package, and Bloodborne occasionally buckles under its weight.
The game looks great, all dark and gloomy and bloody and nasty, but the
severe load times when youre respawning only serve to drive your
failure home a few inches more. Occasional frame-rate issues can hamper
fights against larger groups, a tall-enough order even when its running
smoothly.
Suffice it to say, Bloodborne isnt for everyone. Its unforgiving,
repetitive, and bad for your blood pressure. But its also mysterious,
powerful, and good for your soul the best PS4 exclusive yet. What more
could you have hoped for?
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE Gaming Online - Online Users Growl & Purr!
"""""""""""""""""""
Atari Might Reboot Tempest, Missile Command and Others
As its reboot of 1979 arcade title Asteroids hits Steam Early Access,
publisher Atari says some of its other classic franchises might get the
same treatment.
Tempest, Warlords, Adventure and Missile Command are among the titles
that the firm is considering rebooting. In aid of this, the publisher is
'teaming up with young and innovative studios'.
This comes after the company blocked Tempest developer Jeff Minter from
releasing his new shooter TxK on PS4, PC and Android. Atari believes TxK
constitutes a copyright violation owing to its similarities with Tempest.
Earlier this year, Atari announced that it had decided to re-imagine
Asteroids as open-world PC survival game Asteroids: Outpost.
This is part of our new strategy. We are going to be teaming up with
young and innovative studios to take a refreshing look at each game from
our extensive portfolio, said Atari COO Todd Shallbetter.
Releasing Asteroids: Outpost through the Early Access program will also
help us get feedback from the community. Asteroids is the first of a long
series of re-births, and we are considering doing the same for our other
iconic games such as Warlords, Adventure, Tempest, Missile Command and
many more.
Playing 'Space Invaders' with Real Lasers Is Scary and Awesome
Thirty-seven years after its debut, its still a lot of fun to watch the
iconic Space Invaders aliens blink out of existence when your shot lands
on screen.
But watching them catch fire? Thats better. Way better.
Using a laser cutter, an Arduino mini-computer, and a terrific sense of
imagination, a hobbyist in the U.K. has created a real-world version of
the arcade classic that literally burns the aliens up when your aim is
true.
"Its got aliens, lasers and general destruction so whats not to love,
especially if you could replicate most of that functionality in the real
world," said creator Martin Raynsford.
The project took about four months to conceptualize, but once Raynsford
knew what he had to do, it took him just a few nights to put together, he
says.
The bug-like creatures are made out of paper in this version, and when
hit by the laser, they burst into satisfying flame. The shields are
made of foam, and just like the game, they block the first shot by the
player. That initial volley burns a hole through the shield, though,
making subsequent blasts through it possible.
Theres one big difference between this real-world version and the arcade
game: the invaders dont shoot back, so its basically a massacre. There
is, however, a practical reason for that decision, as a reflecting laser
could do some serious damage to the players vision.
"I thought about mounting a rotating mirror behind the space invaders so
they could shoot back but I decided I like my eyes a bit too much," says
Raynsford.
Players play the game on a laptop, but what theyre actually doing is
controlling an 80-watt laser cutter thats firing beams at paper invaders
clipped to metal plates. Those plates move left and right (and up and
down) courtesy of stepper motors.
When youre playing with real lasers (and real fire), the consequences can
be a lot more severe than a wasted quarter. So before launching the game,
Raynsford conducted a test run (or, test burn, as he calls it). Good thing
he did, as he learned the aliens were too tightly grouped, so hitting one
would set off a chain reaction, burning down the entire row.
While fire can still spread in the current version, he says, its much
less likely now that he has reduced the size of the aliens.
The bad news? Raynsford isnt planning on manufacturing this thing, so
unless you live near his workspace, odds are youre not going to get a
chance to play it yourself. Until then, youre going to have to stick to
more traditional electronic versions of the game.
How Atari Paved The Way for Mobile Gaming
The display of Atari hardware and software presented at the 2015 Game
Developers Conference by the Videogame History Museum was a veritable
treasure trove of video game majesty.
Before attendees at GDC entered an expo hall to play with experimental
game controllers, and to try the games in the GDC Play exhibit, they had
to pass by a temple dedicated to legendary video games. Display cases
filled with Atari hardware, consoles and computers dating back to the
beginning of the living room video game invasion of the late 1970s, were
set up alongside working, legacy Atari consoles and games for GDC
attendees to play.
"The younger developers probably aren't too familiar with some of the
stuff," John Hardie, one of the directors of the Videogame History
Museum, told The Daily Dot. "Even the people who don't quite know what it
is, they seem to appreciate what it is, and they know that it's valuable
to preserve this history."
"It's very rare to find industry people that don't have some association
with the history of the industry," Joseph Santulli, founder of the
museum, told the Dot. "Every once in a while you get a young kid that
will tell me Hey, this stuff came out all before I was even born,' and
you can give them a little bit of a primer as to what each thing is, but
it's pretty rare for somebody to not know."
"We've been collecting ourselves for over 30 years, my two partners and
myself," Hardie said. "This weekend we're picking up a Star Trek cockpit
machine someone's donating. Actually, it turns out to be signed by
Leonard Nimoy."
Shortly before we spoke with Hardie and Santulli, they were given a copy
of an Atari Panther developer kit by a GDC attendee. The Panther was
developed by Atari at the same time the Jaguar console was in
development. The Jaguar was released to the marketplace, whereas the
Panther was not.
"We get people all the time coming up to us saying I have this, it's
sitting in my house, I'd much rather give it to you guys and have it on
display,'" Hardie said. "A lot of the developers, the early game
designers who we've befriended over the years... early Activision guys,
early Atari guys, have donated their entire archives to us."
Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari, Inc., has attended functions held by
the museum. Among the items in the collection at GDC was a copy of a
Puppy Pong machine, with Bushnell's signature.
Part of the joy of attending these sorts of museum exhibitions is
discovering hardware or peripherals that someone may have been
completely unaware of, or had only read about but never seen in person.
We had no idea the Atari Panther was a thing that existed, nor had we
ever seen Puppy Pong.
We also had our first look at one of first coin-operated arcade games
ever, Computer Space.
"It's 1971, and these guys are developing the machine," Santulli said.
"They didn't have anything to work off of, other than How are we gonna
get this game on a television set, and have people interact with it?'
That's all they were working with. And it's actually kind of amazing,
although it doesn't look anything like the cabinets later did."
"It's got all of the other trimmings that you would expect," Santulli
said. "A coin slot, controls in front of you, a television screen at
approximately your eye level, and a score, to keep track of things.
Despite the odd shape and look of it that didn't catch on, they had most
of the other ideas right."
While hardware like the Atari Panther and the Computer Space arcade
machine may seem like mere historical curiosities, there are lessons
relevant to the modern video game industry that developers like those at
GDC can learn. From a certain point of view, old-school Atari games even
have a leg up on modern games.
"There are some designers and developers now who are looking to what made
games fun, and that was a big factor back when you only had 2k-4k [of
memory] to work with," Hardie said. "The game had to focus on being fun,
and not so much the graphics or whatever. And I think we've always said
that, not everybody, but some of the modern games have lost that
element. They have a lot of flashy graphics that look great, but are
they really fun to play?"
According to Hardie, game designers will often stop at Videogame History
Museum displays like those shown at E3, and look at old design documents,
trying to figure out what made these old school games work, and why
people loved them so much. The designers are looking for ideas on how to
apply those lessons to game designs in the present day.
"I spent a lot of the day yesterday sitting down with developers in front
of an Atari 2600, playing the game Outlaw," Santulli said. "What I did
hear quite a bit from those developers was Oh, look, here's some real
simple gameplay elements that make the game, no matter how terrible it
looks, that make the game fun
I think they can definitely appreciate
the fact that you're working with such a limited amount of space and
technology, but still able to make such a fun experience."
Hardie tends to stick with old-school games that only take 15 minutes or
so to play, games like Space Invaders or Gyruss, and his tastes reflect
the demographic that modern, mobile games have so deftly and lucratively
played to. Hardie acknowledged that mobile games which focus on short
play sessions are the spiritual inheritors of Atari's legacy.
"Modern games represent everything now, so [they] represent the
complicated, Skyrim-type games [in which] you have an investment in
time," Santulli said. "But, you could say that a lot of phone app games
really do exactly what these games did back then. They're simple, they're
meant for you to just sit down and play for a short amount of time, or
they're not particularly built in a way where you have to worry about
coming back to it again and again and again, with a password.
"There was a brief period of time before mobile apps became really
popular," Santulli said. "I'm like Oh, these things are getting so
complicated, let me go back and play my Atari because it's nice and
simple.' But I think [video games] have gotten back to [simplicity]."
Santulli doesn't feel the influence of Atari games are limited to today's
mobile games. He feels that Atari inspired a video game spirit that also
lives on in some of the modern industry's biggest and highest-profile
games, like Skyrim.
"In terms of how far can you go with a basic idea, and do it in a much
bigger scale, my favorite game of all time was Adventure, on the Atari
2600, which is real simple," Santulli said. "You've got a little block,
there's a sword, there's a couple dragons, and that's it. Get the
chalice to the castle."
"To me, Skyrim is the ultimate Adventure. There are things going on that
aren't on the screen that you're looking at. You have a weapon, you have
bad guys, there's a quest that you have to complete. What lured me to
[Adventure] when I was a kid, that simple quest, sometimes randomized,
you didn't know exactly how it was going to play out, is basically what
Skyrim is doing today, but of course with a studio of 300 people putting
it all together."
The Videogame History Museum is planning on opening up a physical
location, sometime between June and August. Having a location where
voltages can be checked, and conditions can otherwise be controlled, is
integral to making sure some of the hardware on display at GDC 2015 can
be powered up for use without risking damage. Santulli thinks that even
people who aren't involved in the video game industry, or who are
enthusiasts, may have reason to visit.
"This is such an important part of culture, whether or not you're
involved in it," Santulli said. "Whether or not you embrace it. You
can't ignore it. If, for any reason at all, you needed to learn about it,
or it came to you, you would be able to see, [the museum] fills in that
block of why do people care about it, and we're really showing the
entire lineage. How it started, why it was important, how it's actually
developed our culture, how other pieces of culture have taken from video
games and expanded upon themselves."
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Having Lost on Net Neutrality, Republicans Offer a Deal
When the FCC delivered a clear victory to advocates for net neutrality by
announcing that it would treat the Internet as a common carrier,
congressional Republicans reacted furiously. Speaker John Boehner
denounced "overzealous government bureaucrats" for developing "a secret
plan to put the federal government in control of the Internet." Senator
Marco Rubio said the move "threatened to over-regulate the Internet."
Other GOP lawmakers questioned whether President Obama had interfered
with an independent regulator, since he had put out a statement
endorsing net neutrality just a few months earlier. (At the time,
Senator Ted Cruz compared the proposal to "Obamacare for the Internet.")
Yet nearly a month later, GOP lawmakers remain divided over how to
respond; one proposal would explicitly block the agency's change through
a "resolution of disapproval," while another would actually cut the FCC's
budget and rein in some of its authority. Court challenges to the ruling
are considered inevitable, and Republicans grilled FCC Chairman Tom
Wheeler in a trio of hearings this week on Capitol Hill.
The most interesting possibility, however, is a bipartisan compromise
that, according to its supporters, would legally bar the broadband
industry from segmenting the Internet into "fast lanes" and "slow lanes"
while also returning the web to its status as a communications service,
not a common carrier, as it was for a dozen years before the FCC
announced its change. While the difference may seem like a technicality,
it has taken on great significance for activists concerned that powerful
firms like AT&T, Verizon, or Comcast could block content based on their
business interests, or favor one company over another by providing
faster or slower loading speeds over its broadband network (streaming
Netflix is a frequently-cited example of something that could be
affected).
Proposing the new bill are some of the same senior RepublicansSenator
John Thune and Representatives Greg Walden and Fred Uptonwho long
opposed the very concept of net neutrality but who have changed course
as advocates for Internet freedom have gained momentum over the last
year.
Wikipedia Challenge to NSA Surveillance
Weighs Privacy Violation and Proper Targeting
What are the basics of Wikipedias lawsuit against the National Security
Agency? In a nutshell, the popular free-knowledge product believes the
NSA surveillance of its foreign-based users is discouraging free speech
for all people who use Wikipedia.
On March 10, 2015, the Wikimedia Foundation (the operator of Wikipedia),
along with several human rights and media organizations, filed suit
called Wikimedia Foundation, et al. v. National Security Agency in the
District Court of Maryland.
This lawsuit followed in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks, and it
alleges unconstitutional NSA surveillance practices. Specifically,
Wikimedia and the plaintiffs say that known NSA surveillance of website
users in other countries is discouraging online participation, and
undermines their ability to carry out activities crucial to their
missions.
Wikimedia and the remaining plaintiffs, represented by the American Civil
Liberties Union, claim that the NSAs upstream surveillance practices
violate free speech and privacy rights and exceed the agencys authority
under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (or FISA).
Under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA), the Attorney
General and the Director of National Intelligence may authorize
the
targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United
States to acquire foreign intelligence information.
Allegedly under the authority of the FAA, the NSA has been using
upstream surveillance of communications of foreign and domestic
persons. This type of surveillance involves seizing and searching
internet communications (including emails, webpages, and instant
messages) as they travel across the internet backbone of cables,
switches, and routers. These text-based communications are then
reviewed for any references to NSA search terms relating to a foreign
NSA target.
The communications seized under this practice are those of foreign and
U.S. persons. The NSA does not need individualized suspicion, but rather
it can seize any communication to then determine if it references a
specific target.
Wikipedia depends on U.S. and international readers and contributors to
keep its website going, and believes that the anonymity of users allows
people to freely express their ideas on controversial topics. In an op-ed
published in the New York Times on March 10, Jimmy Wales, Founder of
Wikipedia, and Lila Tretikov, Executive Director of the Wikimedia
Foundation, stated that, [t]hese activities [viewing and editing
Wikipedia articles] are sensitive and private: They can reveal
everything from a persons political and religious beliefs to sexual
orientation and medical conditions.
Wikimedia claims that the NSAs unconstitutional surveillance practices
chill free speech by discouraging users in countries with repressive
governments to contribute for fear of identification and retribution.
According to Wales and Tretikov, [privacy] empowers us to read, write
and communicate in confidence, without fear of persecution. Knowledge
flourishes where privacy is protected.
The ACLU, Wikimedia, and the remaining plaintiffs are a few amongst
several organizations that have challenged the constitutionality of NSA
surveillance programs exposed in the aftermath of the Snowden leaks.
Slack Hacked, Leaving 500,000 User Emails Exposed
Slack Technologies, maker of a popular work-chat tool, had its user
database hacked in February.
Slack Technologies sure is making headlines. The San Francisco maker of
an online workplace collaboration tool - which has drawn attention over
its $2.76 billion market valuation - revealed a major hack of its user
database Friday, releasing email addresses and potentially phone numbers
of its 500,000 users.
Slack reported that hackers infiltrated its central user database, which
includes email addresses and anything else added to users profiles, such
as phone numbers or Skype IDs. Passwords, however, are encrypted in the
database.
The hack reportedly took place over four days in February. Slack did not
notify all users until publishing a blog post Friday morning and later
emailing all users.
The announcement was made as soon as we were able to confirm details,
the post read.
The company reported that it detected suspicious activity in some
accounts and notified those specific users earlier, a Slack spokesperson
wrote to International Business Times in an email.
With the announcement of the hack, Slack pushed two new security features.
Slack now supports two-factor authentication, a tool that requires users
to confirm their log-in through two systems, such as with receiving a
text message verification code. The security feature is something that
many companies, including Apple with iMessage and Google with Gmail, have
started to roll out and push to prevent privacy invasions.
"This further highlights the need for all organizations - both startups
and established companies - to invest in post-infection software that can
quickly identify security breaches and prevent valuable data theft," Paul
Martini, CEO of cybersecurity provider iBoss, said in a statement.
Slack was developing two-factor authentication and was about a week away
from releasing it, Reeve wrote, but the company chose an early launch
after confirming the hack. Another new feature, "password kill switch,"
will allow administrators to terminate all user sessions and reset all
passwords.
This isnt the first time Slack has been criticized for privacy and
security concerns. In October 2014, the company gained media attention for
leaving the names given to chat rooms visible to anyone. That flaw left
potential secret departments and product development at companies, from
the likes of Apple, Google and Facebook, exposed. Slack denied the design
flaw as a bug but later clarified its policy.
Google Issues Warning on Rogue Chinese Digital TLS Certs
On Friday Google spotted unauthorized digital certificates for many of
its domains that had been issued from Egypt. While Google did not see any
misuse of the impersonated encryption certs, the company said the
possibility was real for attackers to use them to intercept and monitor
online traffic, according to a blog post on Monday.
According to the company, the bogus certificates, which are trusted by
all major browsers and OSes, were issued by an Egypt-based intermediate
cert authority named MCS Holdings, which operates under the China
Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) - a trusted nonprofit
security certificate verification organization. CNNIC is also responsible
for all Internet issues and is an extension of the Ministry of
Information Industry for the Chinese government.
When Google contacted CNNIC about the bad certs, the company said that
MCS only issued certificates for domains registered by the Chinese
Internet center. However, researchers at Google did not find this to be
the case.
"However, rather than keep the private key in a suitable HSM, MCS
installed it in a man-in-the-middle proxy," wrote Adam Langley, security
engineer for Google. "These devices intercept secure connections by
masquerading as the intended destination and are sometimes used by
companies to intercept their employees' secure traffic for monitoring or
legal reasons. The employees' computers normally have to be configured to
trust a proxy for it to be able to do this. However, in this case, the
presumed proxy was given the full authority of a public CA [certificate
authority], which is a serious breach of the CA system."
Along with alerting other tech vendors, including Microsoft and Apple, to
the potentially dangerous certs, Google said that its Chrome Web browser
running on any other platform would have automatically rejected the
certificates thanks to the browser's built-in public key pinning security
feature.
Mozilla also issued a statement saying that the next version of its
Firefox browser (Firefox 37) will automatically revoke the certs issued
by CNNIC and may conduct a security audit to confirm that "the CA updated
their procedures, and using name constraints to constrain the CA's
hierarchy to certain domains."
Microsoft has yet to comment on any actions it may be planning to take to
block the rogue certs in Internet Explorer or Windows. According to the
company's modern.IE developer site, a similar public key pinning feature
found in Chrome is currently being considered for future versions of
Internet Explorer.
Greatfire.org Faces Daily $30,000 Bill from DDoS Attack
An activist group that monitors Chinese web blocks has suffered a
sustained distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that has seen its
server costs soar to $30,000 a day.
Censorship watchdog GreatFire.org's mission is to bring an end to Chinese
censorship of the web, something it helps accomplish by mirroring sites,
such as Google and Facebook, that are otherwise blocked by the Great
Firewall of China.
By hosting the mirrors on content distribution networks (CDNs) that use
the same hosting services that many legitimate Chinese sites rely on,
such as Amazon Web Services, the group's strategy has worked up until
now as the only effective response from the authorities would most
likely also take out Chinese businesses.
In fact the strategy has been so successful that GreatFire previously
told Google that it could help the company take down all Chinese
censorship within 10 days.
Now, however, the group has experienced its first ever denial of service
attack, receiving 2500 times more traffic than normal, prompting
Greatfire admin and co-founder Charlie Smith to say:
This kind of attack is aggressive and is an exhibition of censorship by
brute force. Attackers resort to tactics like this when they are left
with no other options.
Smith said the attack, which is delivering up to 2.6 billion requests per
hour, started on Thursday, shortly after an article about how the group
used cloud services to circumvent censorship appeared on the Wall Street
Journal website.
The magnitude of the attack poses a challenge to GreatFire and Smith
admitted the group was unable to cope with the technical challenges.
Furthermore, the financial implications of the vast number of requests
being made could cripple the group - it is currently unaware of how
Amazon will react to the huge bandwidth bill currently being racked up:
Because of the number of requests we are receiving, our bandwidth costs
have shot up to US$30,000 per day. Amazon, which is the service we are
using, has not yet confirmed whether they will forgo this.
It's not currently clear who may be behind the attack but people are
looking to China as a suspect.
Not only do the authorities wish to block access to the sites GreatFire
makes available, the country has been suspected of using similar tactics
before to take down activist websites, and accusations of state-sponsored
hacking are commonplace.
GreatFire says it doesn't know who is behind the attack, but said "the
attack coincides with increased pressure on our organization over the
last few months".
Section 66A of IT Act Is Unconstitutional, Supreme Court Rules
The Supreme Court of India today struck down Section 66A of the
Information Technology Act - a controversial law that allowed law
enforcement officials to arrest people for posting "offensive" comments
on social networks and other internet sites.
After hearing a clutch of petitions by defenders of free speech, the
Supreme Court described the 2009 amendment to India's Information
Technology Act known as section 66A as vague and ambiguous and beyond
ambit of the constitutional right to freedom of speech.
"Section 66A is unconstitutional and we have no hesitation in striking it
down," said Justice R F Nariman, reading out the judgement. "The public's
right to know is directly affected by section 66A."
The Information Technology Act 2000 was amended in the year 2008 and this
amended act contains the 66A section. Under this section, "Any person who
sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication device, any
information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character; or any
information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing
annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal
intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will, persistently by making use of
such computer resource or a communication device,
any electronic mail or electronic mail message for the purpose of
causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the
addressee or recipient about the origin of such messages, shall be
punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three
years and with fine."
But, the legality of section 66A has been in Question from years. The
Supreme Court earlier had said that terms like 'illegal', 'grossly
offensive' and 'menacing character' were vague expressions and were
likely to be dangerously twisted and misused.
Section 66A act stops people to share and express their different or
controversial opinion freely that may not necessarily be dangerous or a
subject of 'grossly offensive' and 'menacing character'. Like for
example, Theory of Evolution may be a false information for those
religious people who believes that God created the whole world, but it
may be useful information for those who study Science.
In 2012, two young women Shaheen Dhanda and Rinu Shrinivasan were
arrested in Palghar in Thane district, Mumbai under the Section 66A act
for posting comments against the shutdown in Mumbai following Shiv Sena
leader Bal Thackeray's death.
The charges on two young ladies were later quashed by a Mumbai court, but
this first case filled under Section 66A followed a number of arrests
across the country for uploading political cartoons or posting comments
on social network, which sparked outrage and fierce debate about online
censorship in India.
Some other controversial arrests under Section 66A of the IT act are as
follows:
Recently, a class XII student was arrested for posting about Uttar
Pradesh Minister Azam Khan on his Facebook timeline.
Businessman Ravi Srinivasan was booked by police for allegedly tweeting
that the son of then union minister P Chidambaram, Karti Chidambaram,
was 'corrupt'.
Last year, Devu Chodankar was arrested in Goa for writing on Goa+, a
popular Facebook forum with over 47,000 members, that if elected to
power, Modi would unleash a 'holocaust'.
Ambikesh Mahapatra, a Jadavpur University professor, was arrested in
Kolkata for forwarding a cartoon about Mamata Banerjee.
The government argued that the section 66A of the IT act was needed to
protect the government data from hackers, to which the court was not at
all impressed as this situation was already dealt with viruses and
hacking for which Section 65 of the IT Act was relevant.
Tinder Hack Tricks Men into Unknowingly Flirting With Each Other
In yet another example of how very hackable Tinder is, a programmer
rigged the app with bait profiles, identified men who "liked" the phony
female photos, and set them up to fling lust-filled come-ons at each
other.
Cue the hilarity and loss of reading comprehension.
Screenshots of the confused conversations that followed were provided to
The Verge, which already maintains a chat room that's dedicated to the
curation of staffers' Tinder misadventures - a "bleak landscape,"
Michael Zelenko writes.
Now, the publication has a new genre to add to its Tinder compilation:
the baffled but ever-hopeful male Tinder user.
The prank was set up by a California-based computer engineer who created
a program that identified two men who "liked" one of his bait profiles.
One of the profiles featured a photo of a vlogger named Boxxy and one
used the photo of an acquaintance who had given her consent.
The program relayed the men's messages - "some aggressive, others
mundane, but all of them unabashedly flirtatious" - back and forth
through the dummy profile.
The engineer - The Verge gave him the pseudonym of "Patrick" - used to be
a Tinder user and in fact met his current girlfriend there.
He was inspired to create the prank program by listening to women friends
complain about their incoming Tinder messages:
The original idea was to throw that back into the face of the people
doing it to see how they would react.
First, he started to build a Twitter bot to tweet out every first message
received by a female friend, but Tinder was more amenable to the prank,
he said.
That's because Tinder's API is notoriously vulnerable to being exploited.
Not only has it been used to promote a movie, it's also been abused to
expose users' locations and to auto-like all female profiles.
(For what it's worth, that last one's not just a homemade hack anymore.
Indiscriminate "likers" now have an app for that.)
The creator of the dude-on-dude hack told The Verge that pwning Tinder is
a snap:
As long as you have a Facebook authentication token, you can behave as a
robot as if you were a person.
"Patrick" said he finds the ethics of the exploit to be ambiguous.
Although he developed code to scramble phone numbers and otherwise
prevented real-world meetings from taking place, he says he can't help
but think that the men he pranked kind of deserved it, given how eager
they were to meet their new "girl" friends and how blind they were to
obvious red flags:
They ignore all the signs, they ignore all the weird things. When someone
is so quick to meet up without any detail or know anything about the
person at all - maybe its deserved.
That sounds a bit like like victim-blaming to me. Regardless of how
lustfully clueless the men were, they were still unwitting victims of a
prank.
But Patrick has a good point. The exploit is yet another example of how
people - or bots, in this case - can hide behind a fabricated persona
online.
That's why we warn people against accepting friend requests from people
they don't know on Facebook, and it's why we tell people to be cautious
about meeting in person someone they've only met online.
People tend to think of women and children as being potential victims,
but this advice applies to all.
RadioShack To Auction Off Customer Data, Violating Own Privacy Policy
Retail chain RadioShack is looking to cash in the information it holds on
its customers as part of its bankruptcy sale.
According to Hilco Streambank, personal data including over 65 million
customers' names and physical addresses, as well as 13 million email
addresses, has been made available to the highest bidder.
All this despite the fact that the company's online privacy policy quite
clearly states:
We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to
anyone at any time. We will not use any personal information beyond what
is necessary to assist us in delivering to you the services you have
requested. We may send personally identifiable information about you to
other organizations when: We have your consent to share the information
(you will be provided the opportunity to opt-out if you desire).
According to the Washington Post, the auction for RadioShack's assets has
already been completed, with Standard General - a hedge fund and
RadioShack's largest shareholder - the winner.
But the deal is yet to be completed as a bankruptcy court will need to
approve the deal and, even then, there may be more legal hurdles to
overcome before RadioShack can hand over any customer data.
According to a case filed in Texas, state regulators have offered up some
objections to the proposed transaction, saying the sale would breach the
company's online privacy policy as well as in-store promises not to sell
personal identifying information (PII).
The court filing also notes that the sale of customer data is illegal
under state laws, which prevent the selling of personal information in
violation of a company's own privacy policies, as covered by the Texas
Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Responding to the possibility that RadioShack may sell its customer data
in direct conflict with its stated privacy policy, New York Attorney
General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement:
When a company collects private customer data on the condition that it
will not be resold, it is the companys responsibility to uphold their
end of the bargain. My office will continue to monitor Radio Shacks
bankruptcy sale and whether it includes auctioning off private customer
data. We are committed to taking appropriate action to protect New York
consumers.
But it's not only the authorities that are concerned about the privacy
implications of this case - AT&T wants RadioShack to destroy the data,
fearing that the data may fall into the hands of its competitors and
claiming that some of it was obtained through the sale of its mobile
contracts and is thus not RadioShack's property in the first place.
To further complicate matters, a previous case in Manhattan may have
some bearing after authorities approved the auctioning off of personal
data under some circumstances.
In 2011, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) gave the green light to the
$13.9 million sale of Borders' intellectual property to Barnes & Noble,
on condition that the same privacy policy applied, the buyer operated
within the same line of business, and if the data was sold in
conjunction with other assets.
With Standard General reportedly looking to keep some RadioShack stores
open, it may try to argue that any use of customer data may fall into a
similar situation.
So what can consumers do to protect their data?
While the RadioShack ship may have already sailed, consumers should be
aware that there is no legal requirement to hand over any information to
a company beyond that which is required to complete the transaction.
So, next time a business asks for additional information that is
incidental to the transaction being carried out, you are well within your
rights to say no.
Google Loses Ruling in Safari Tracking Case
Google's Safari issue goes back to nine months in 2011 and 2012.
In a landmark ruling, the UK's Court of Appeal has dismissed Google's
request to prevent British Web users from suing the company over
tracking cookies and privacy violations.
The decision was announced Friday, according to the BBC.
The case revolves around Apple's Safari browser, Google's Safari
workaround, and cookies - small text files installed on PCs that record
data on surfing activity. In spite of default privacy settings and user
preferences - including an opt-out of consent to be tracked by cookies
- Google's tracking cookies gathered information on Safari browser
users for nine months in 2011 and 2012.
Google profits from DoubleClick tracking cookies by installing them on
computing devices and leading users to tailored advertisements. The
DoubleClick ID Cookie, when settled within a user's browser, tracks and
gathers data about the user based on Web activity and searches.
This information can include surfing habits, ethnicity, sexual interests,
religious and political beliefs, and potentially financial data.
Three British computer users brought the case to court, arguing that
Google ignored consumer wishes to not have tracking cookies installed on
their machines.
Google argued the point was moot because consumers suffered no financial
hardship due to the practice. The UK's Court of Appeal disagreed.
According to the court's judgment:
"These claims raise serious issues which merit a trial. They concern what
is alleged to have been the secret and blanket tracking and collation of
information, often of an extremely private nature [...] about and
associated with the claimants' Internet use, and the subsequent use of
that information for about nine months. The case relates to the anxiety
and distress this intrusion upon autonomy has caused."
UK Web users who accessed the web through Apple devices, including Macs,
iPhones and iPads during the nine-month period now have carte blanche to
take the tech giant to court if they feel their privacy has been invaded.
According to the BBC, Google is "disappointed with the court's decision."
The Google Action Group, a not-for-profit group set up to manage the
claims of consumers against Google, applauded the decision.
"This is a David and Goliath victory," one of the claimants, Marc
Bradshaw, said in a statement from the Google Action Group. "The Court of
Appeal has ensured Google cannot use its vast resources to evade English
justice. Ordinary computer users like me will now have the right to hold
this giant to account before the courts for its unacceptable, immoral and
unjust actions."
Dan Tench, a partner at Olswang who represents the claimants, said Google
will now be held accountable for its choices.
"This is an important decision that prevents Google from evading or
trivialising these very serious intrusions into the privacy of British
consumers," he said in the statement. "Google, a company that makes
billions from advertising knowledge, claims that it was unaware that was
secretly tracking Apple users for a period of nine months and had argued
that no harm was done because the matter was trivial as consumers had
not lost out financially. The Court of Appeal saw these arguments for
what they are: a breach of consumers' civil rights and actionable
before the English courts."
Google did not immediately return a request for comment.
Microsoft Clears Up Just Who Gets Free Windows 10
Microsoft really wants people to upgrade to Windows 10 when it comes out
this summer. So much that Microsoft announced at an event in January that
upgrading to Windows 10 would be free for a year.
But then what?
I had a chance to sit down with Aaron Woodman, senior director of product
marketing at Microsoft, to get the skinny on the Free Windows 10 offer.
To recap what weve known since the Jan. 21 Windows 10 announcement:
Microsoft will provide an upgrade from Windows 7 or Windows 8 to
Windows 10 for free, for a period of one year from the release of
Windows 10. There are some important details to this deal that were
revealed, and a few that werent. In my talk with Woodman, I got what I
think is the definitive take on who will have to pay for Windows 10 and
when, and who will not.
The Windows 10 upgrade will be free and a one-step process for consumers
using the current versions of Windows 7 (SP1) and Windows 8 (8.1). If
youre using an older version (Windows 7 or Windows 8 proper), youll
have to upgrade to the current version first. Those upgrades are free,
too, but Windows 10 wont upgrade Windows 7 or 8 until its made
current. Thatll make the upgrade a two-step process for users on older
versions.
From one year after Windows 10 is launched, sometime this summer, you
will be able to upgrade from Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1 for free. But
only if you are a specific kind of user.
The free-upgrade offer is for consumers upgrading their own computers.
Its not available to to users of enterprise licenses of Windows: If you
want to upgrade the machine on your desk at your big corporate job, the
free offer wont apply. Your IT department wont get a bunch of free
upgrades to give out; theyll have to pay for them. Likewise, PC
manufacturers wont get free licenses for Windows 10 to install on new,
unsold computers. For these guys, and in general, in no way is Windows
free, Woodman said.
Woodman clarified for me that if you upgrade your PC to Windows 10 with
the free offer, you wont be socked with a payment demand after some
arbitrary period. Windows 10 isnt freemium. It wont convert from a
free upgrade to a paid or subscription-supported operating system. He
told me, clearly, Once youre on Windows 10, youre on Windows 10, and
there will be no additional charge.
There are some individuals who wont be eligible for the offer, but not
many. He implied that even if you miss the one-year free-upgrade window,
itll still be free: Basically no consumers will pay for Windows 10,
Woodman said. Almost everybody will get the operating system either on a
new PC (where the PC manufacturer pays for it), through work (where the
company pays for an upgrade), or through the free-upgrade offer.
There are, though, edge cases that add up to a small fraction of
Windows users. If you want a fresh copy of Windows 10 to install on a
home-built computer or on a virtual machine (like Parallels or VMware
Fusion on a Mac), you might have to pay for the operating system. Woodman
said, We never said Windows is free, but also, We havent made the
decision on whether it will be free for these users, nor what it will
cost if it is not free.
Microsoft sees everyone using Windows as a customer, no matter how they
got the operating system or what they paid for it (if anything). The more
customers Microsoft has, the more potential buyers it has of its own apps
(like Office) and the more people who will be using the Windows App
store, from which Microsoft will take a percentage of all sales.
Furthermore, keeping Windows users on a current, safe version of Windows
means better security and privacy for everybody. Hacked computers can
infect other computers. Breaches and hacks cost companies (like
Microsoft) money and customers.
Around the world, many of Windows 1.5 billion users are using pirated
or, in Microsofts lingo, non-genuine licenses of Windows. Woodman
said that many dont even know it.??Microsofts goal is to get all
Windows customers to take advantage of the upgrade offer and to get them
on the most current, most secure version of the operating system. Theres
a lot of value in the ecosystem, Woodman said. There are a lot of future
paying customers. Those customers are valuable to Windows.
Microsoft hasnt answered all the Windows 10 pricing question. The company
still doesnt know (or is not revealing) the Windows 10 pricing for those
who do have to pay for it, nor is it providing the full details of the
amnesty program for upgrading pirated copies of Windows. As my talk with
Woodman was winding down, a communications rep made sure to tell me, The
story will get more clear as we talk about our product roadmap. But the
one thing that is clear, so far, is this: If you have a personal computer
running Windows 7 or 8, you wont have to pay for Windows 10. Ever.
A Clever Way To Tell Which of Your Emails Are Being Tracked
While youve likely never heard of companies like Yesware, Bananatag, and
Streak, they almost certainly know a good deal about you. Specifically,
they know when youve opened an email sent by one of their clients, where
you are, what sort of device youre on, and whether youve clicked a
link, all without your awareness or consent.
That sort of email tracking is more common than you might think. A Chrome
extension called Ugly Mail shows you whos guilty of doing it to your
inbox.
Sonny Tulyaganov, Ugly Mails creator, says he was inspired to write the
tiny script when a friend told him about Streak, an email-tracking
service whose Chrome extension has upwards of 300,000 users. Tulyaganov
was appalled.
[Streak] allowed users track emails, see when, where and what device
were used to view email, he recalled to WIRED. I tried it out and found
it very disturbing, so decided to see who is actually tracking emails in
my inbox. Once the idea for Ugly Mail was born, it only took a few hours
to make it a reality.
The reason it was so easy to create is that the kind of tracking it
monitors is itself a simple procedure.
Marketersor anyone whos inspired
to snoopsimply insert a transparent 1×1 image into an email. When that
email is opened, the image pings the server it originated from with
information like the time, your location, and the device youre using.
Its a read receipt on steroids that you never signed up for.
Pixel tracking is a long-established practice, and theres nothing
remotely illegal or even particularly discouraged about it; Google even
has a support page dedicated to guiding advertisers through the process.
That doesnt make it any less unsettling to see just how closely your
inbox activity is being monitored.
Using Ugly Mail is as simple as the service is effective. Once youve
installed it, the code identifies emails that include tracking pixels
from any of the three services mentioned above. Those messages will
appear in your inbox with an eye icon next to the subject heading,
letting you know that once clicked, it will alert the sender. Tulyaganov
also confirmed to WIRED that Ugly Mail also doesnt store, save, or
transmit any data from your Gmail account or computer; everything takes
place on the users end.
Ugly Mail appears to work as advertised in our test, but it has its
limitations. Its only built for Gmail (sorry
Outlookers) and is only
available for Chrome, although Tulyaganov says that Firefox and Safari
versions are in the works. And while its effective against Yesware,
Bananatag, and Streak, those are just three pixel-tracking providers in
a sea of sneaking marketers. Tulyaganov has indicated that Ugly Mail
will continue to add more tracking services to its list, but its not
clear yet how long that might take. The onrush of users after receiving
top billing on Product Hunt may help speed up the process.
If youd like take take the extra step of just blocking pixel tracking
altogether, another Chrome extension called PixelBlockalso referenced on
Product Huntautomatically prevents all attempts, instead of Ugly Mails
more passive strategy of simply informing you that theyre happening.
Pixel tracking isnt going away any time soon, and Ugly Mail is an
imperfect way to prevent it. But it still offers a valuable glimpse at
the marketing machinations were all exposed to every day, whether
were aware of them or not.
Glassholes Rejoice! Google Promises Glass 2.0
If the recent shuttering of the current version of Google Glass has left
a hole in your wearable heart, fear not. Google executive chairman Eric
Schmidt has promised that the team is committed to developing the
company's flagship wearable, which is being built under the leadership
of Nest CEO Tony Fadell.
Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Schmidt said that Glass is "a
big and very fundamental platform for Google." The chairman noted that
developing Glass is a long-term project not unlike the company's
self-driving car initiative, and that the wearable is being re-imagined
rather than completely scrapped.
In January Google halted sales of the original version of Glass, which
sold for a steep $1,500. At the same time, the company announced that
the new Glass program would be led by Fadell, who currently runs
Google-owned smart home company Nest and previously worked on Apple's
iPod and iPhone.
The restructuring of Glass gives Google an opportunity to address
consumers' biggest gripes with the device, namely its appearance, high
price and somewhat limited functionality.
"To be able to reach a broader audience, [Google] is going to have to
adapt their solution to those who already have eyewear," ABI Research
analyst Jeff Orr told us. "It's one thing to have something that looks
like safety glasses... it's another thing to [offer] something a
consumer would want to wear and feel comfortable doing so.
Aesthetics aside, Orr noted that the next Google Glass would benefit
from better visibility for drivers, as well as a battery life long
enough to last all day. The wearable's limited battery life was a major
gripe in our review, as we were only able to squeeze about 5 hours of
use out of the device on a full charge.
While Google has plenty to address for its next pair of smartglasses,
Orr commends the company for breaking new ground, and believes that
Glass could thrive under Fadell's leadership.
"This is a group within Google that now has a history of very strong
consumer facing products," said Orr. "Having a team that understands
hardware, human machine interface and how people behave in their
environment [could] make a positive iteration," he continued.
=~=~=~=
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