Category Archives: News

Source: Hacker News

Source: adafruit industries blog

Many years ago (not 39 years ago, though possibly 19) I remember reading The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer. Already, a lot had to be explained to a programmer of the day. But now there’s Mel’s Loop, an annotated version with a page of resources for additional background. According to the author,

Today we celebrate the 39th anniversary of the first publication of The Story of Mel by Ed Nather. The Story of Mel was written as a memoir about the era of early computing of the late 1950s, creating a fresh memory of the days when Hackership was first forged. It continued to live through the years as an epic hacker folklore.

Little is known about the origins of The Story of Mel, its characters, and technical aspects. Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time researching the story. As I interviewed people who were related to it, I discovered some interesting details about the life and origins of Mel, Ed, and their stories, as well as the company where it all happened, and developed a deep perspective of Mel’s famous hack.

To celebrate this research, we launch today a new project: Mel’s Loop, which includes an annotated version of the story, along with articles and other materials that are soon to be added to this web companion – related to The Story of Mel, and to the Hacker Folklore genre in general.

And here’s the opening of The Story of Mel itself:

A recent article devoted to the macho side of programming made the bold and unvarnished statement:

Real Programmers write in FORTRAN.

Maybe they do now, in this decadent era of Lite beer, hand calculators, and “user-friendly” software…

Check out Mel’s Loop!

Source: Hacker News

Source: OSNews

In this installment: some strange things I discovered when purchasing a FreeDOS laptop from Hewlett Packard. I suspect that the audience for this will be somewhat limited but I had fun exploring this. Perhaps you, dear reader, will find a chuckle in here too.

Some background: I recently purchased a HP ZBook 17.8 G8 as I run Fedora Linux I decided to have a little fun with the OS selection and picked the FreeDOS option (Other options include Ubuntu, and various flavors of Windows 11).

I can guarantee you this will be a lot weirder than you think.

Source: Hacker News

Source: Hacker News

Source: Hacker News

Source: Ars Technica

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino)

A European Commission proposal could force tech companies to scan private messages for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and evidence of grooming, even when those messages are supposed to be protected by end-to-end encryption.

Online services that receive "detection orders" under the pending European Union legislation would have "obligations concerning the detection, reporting, removal and blocking of known and new child sexual abuse material, as well as solicitation of children, regardless of the technology used in the online exchanges," the proposal says. The plan calls end-to-end encryption an important security tool but essentially orders companies to break that end-to-end encryption by whatever technological means necessary:

In order to ensure the effectiveness of those measures, allow for tailored solutions, remain technologically neutral, and avoid circumvention of the detection obligations, those measures should be taken regardless of the technologies used by the providers concerned in connection to the provision of their services. Therefore, this Regulation leaves to the provider concerned the choice of the technologies to be operated to comply effectively with detection orders and should not be understood as incentivising or disincentivising the use of any given technology, provided that the technologies and accompanying measures meet the requirements of this Regulation.

That includes the use of end-to-end encryption technology, which is an important tool to guarantee the security and confidentiality of the communications of users, including those of children. When executing the detection order, providers should take all available safeguard measures to ensure that the technologies employed by them cannot be used by them or their employees for purposes other than compliance with this Regulation, nor by third parties, and thus to avoid undermining the security and confidentiality of the communications of users.

A questions-and-answers document describing the plan emphasizes the importance of scanning end-to-end encrypted messages. "NCMEC [National Center for Missing and Exploited Children] estimates that more than half of its CyberTipline reports will vanish with end-to-end encryption, leaving abuse undetected, unless providers take measures to protect children and their privacy also on end-to-end encrypted services," it says.

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Source: The Verge - All Posts

I have been told to blog about Senator Josh Hawley’s new copyright bill, and I do this with nothing but the greatest reluctance. Normally, I love talking about copyright! I’ll talk about copyright all day long! [Ed note: And she does.] But writing this post is agony, because the thought of giving this absolutely asinine piece of legislation any attention is killing me on the inside.

This is a deeply unserious bill. There is not a line in it that is meant to pass muster. It is knowingly in violation of the Constitution, and an insult to the democratic process.

In brief, the bill is targeted at the Walt Disney Company, also known as,

a person that (i) has a market capitalization of more than $150,000,000,000; and (ii)(I) is classified...

Continue reading…

Source: Hacker News