Source: NYT > World
Despite hundreds of thousands protesting against him for months, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko has been able to cling to power thanks to an all-pervasive security system.
Source: Kentucky.com -- Education
A University of Kentucky employee spent $256,000 on the unauthorized purchase of more than 80 iPhones, other high-tech equipment, travel expenses and other personal items over the course of three … Click to Continue »
Source: TorrentFreak
With more ways to stream online video than ever before, protecting video continues to be a key issue for copyright holders.
This is often achieved through Digital Rights Management, which is often referred to by the initials DRM. In a nutshell, DRM is an anti-piracy tool that dictates when and where digital content can be accessed.
Google is an important player in this area. The company owns the Widevine DRM technology which is used by many of the largest streaming services including Amazon, Netflix and Disney+. As such, keeping it secure is vital.
Widevine DRM comes in different levels. The L1 variant is the most secure, followed by L2 and L3. While the latter still protects content from being easily downloaded, it’s certainly not impossible to bypass, as pirates have repeatedly shown.
Despite its vulnerabilities, Google doesn’t want to make it too easy for the public at large. This became apparent a few hours ago when the company asked the developer platform GitHub to remove dozens of “Widevine L3 Decryptor” repositories.
The code, originally published by security researcher Tomer Hadad, is a proof-of-concept code Chrome extension that shows how easy it is to bypass the low-security DRM. Google was aware of this vulnerability and previously informed Krebs Security that it would address the issue.
One option would be to patch the security flaw but, for now, Google appears to be focusing on the takedown route. In a DMCA notice sent to GitHub, the company requests the immediate takedown of dozens of “Widevine L3 Decryptor” copies.
“The following git repository [sic] contain circumvention technology that enables users to illegally access video and audio works protected by copyright,” Google writes.
“This Chrome extension demonstrates how it’s possible to bypass Widevine DRM by hijacking calls to the browser’s Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) and decrypting all Widevine content keys transferred – effectively turning it into a clearkey DRM,” Google adds.
Google sees the code, which was explicitly published for educational purposes only, as a circumvention tool. As such, it allegedly violates section 1201 of the DMCA, an allegation that was also made against the youtube-dl code last month.
The takedown notice includes a long list of repositories that were all made unavailable by GitHub. This doesn’t cover the original code from Tomer Hadad, who already removed his version in late October, citing “legal reasons.”
Google views this vulnerability as a serious matter and the company says that it has also filed a Sensitive Data takedown request to prevent the Widevine’s ‘secret’ private key from being publicly shared.
“In addition to this request, we have filed a separate Sensitive Data takedown request of this file: /widevine-l3-decryptor as it contains the secret Widevine RSA private key, which was extracted from the Widevine CDM and can be used in other circumvention technologies.”
That last mention is interesting as private keys, which are simply a string of characters, are not seen as copyrighted or private content by everyone.
“If you distribute your key with the software, then whatever form it is in, I would not consider it “private” at all,” a commenter on Hacker News points out.
This ‘key controversy’ is reminiscent of an issue that was widely debated thirteen years ago. At the time, a hacker leaked the AACS cryptographic key “09 F9” online which prompted the MPAA and AACS LA to issue DMCA takedown requests to sites where it surfaced.
This escalated into a censorship debate when sites started removing articles that referenced the leak, triggering a massive backlash.
At the time, the controversial AACS key was still readily available through Google’s search engine. In that regard very little has changed. Despite Google’s sensitive data takedown request, the Widevine RSA key is easy to find through its own search engine.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Source: OSNews
Mac users today began experiencing unexpected issues that included apps taking minutes to launch, stuttering and non-responsiveness throughout macOS, and other problems. The issues seemed to begin close to the time when Apple began rolling out the new version of macOS, Big Sur—but it affected users of other versions of macOS, like Catalina and Mojave.
Other Apple services faced slowdowns, outages, and odd behavior, too, including Apple Pay, Messages, and even Apple TV devices.
It didn’t take long for some Mac users to note that
trustd—a macOS process responsible for checking with Apple’s servers to confirm that an app is notarized—was attempting to contact a host namedoscp.apple.combut failing repeatedly. This resulted in systemwide slowdowns as apps attempted to launch, among other things.
What a brave new world – some server goes down, and you can’t use your applications anymore.
Source: loriemerson
Below is a syllabus for a sophomore-level class I hope to teach in Fall 2021. This class is a reflection of my ongoing work on a cluster projects I call “Other Networks“–attempts to uncover and document the technical specs and functionalities of pre-internet networks (particularly from the 1970s and early 1980s) as well as artistic experiments on these same networks.
“To propose an alternate history is to propose that history can be altered, to change directions, to inaugurate an alternate future.”
Sofia Samatar, “Toward a Planetary History of Afrofuturism”
General Class Description:
This class explores questions, fears, and ideas about technology and the future through literature about technology, literary technologies, and narratives about the future that move across periods, regions, and disciplines. We’ll get acquainted with literary styles, genres, movements, technologies, and histories. Our cultural and historical approach will illuminate how race, gender and sexuality, class, and nationality structure seemingly neutral research and development, usage, and innovation. Ultimately, our goal is to see how we’re not simply passive consumers but active participants in reimagining the present and future of technology. This class also fulfills the diversity requirement by providing students with skills to understand gender, race, marginalization, and multiculturalism to the study of literature and technology.
Specific Class Description:
This iteration of the class begins by introducing students to foundational works from media studies to give them tools to analyze media as well as analyze art and literature that actively works with and against media ranging from the book to the digital computer; these foundational works also demonstrate a range of historical imaginings of the future of digital media in particular.
We will then use claims from this unit, such as Ted Nelson’s 1974 urgent invocation for us to “understand computers NOW,” to move us into the next cluster of readings that first teach students about what the contemporary internet is as well as where it is. Subsequently, drawing heavily from thinkers such as Shoshana Zuboff, Safiya Noble and Siva Vaidynathan, we will learn about the extent which large corporations intentionally blackbox and obfuscate how the internet and their deeply biased (and therefore harmful) algorithms work.
However, since we take seriously Sofia Samatar’s declaration that “To propose an alternate history is to propose that history can be altered, to change directions, to inaugurate an alternate future,” at this point in the class we will promptly move back to the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s to investigate what alternatives to the internet have existed–and still might exist–and how artists and writers experimented with these networks. We will look at mail art networks, lesbian newsletter networks, socialist and countercultural teletype machine networks, time-sharing networks, slow scan TV networks, videotex networks, and Bulletin Board Systems.
Finally, in case students are left with the sense that the only viable alternatives to the contemporary internet are dead networks from the past, we will end our class by a) learning about a range of contemporary feminist, anti-capitalist, and artistic alternative networks and b) learning how to build your own sneakernet and your own mesh network. In this way, we will deeply internalize Lizzie O’Shea’s moving statement that “The networked computer represents an exciting opportunity to reshape the world in an image of sustainable prosperity, shared collective wealth, democratized knowledge and respectful social relations. But such a world is only possible if we actively decide to build it.” We will, then, learn how to build this future world.
Course Requirements and Policies
In addition to a class presentation on a writer or theorist, you will be required to contribute to online discussion forums on our class blog, write a research paper, and produce a group project. Since our class is paperless, I don’t mind if you bring your laptop to class but of course this means I expect you to use it appropriately. I’m sure you’ve probably already found you learn better, concentrate better, and distract others around you less if you don’t use your laptop in class
You will also be required to contribute to class regularly. Participation begins with attendance. Both absences and tardiness will affect this portion of your grade. For this course, you are allowed three absences without penalty; these should be reserved for sickness, holidays, tiredness, laziness etc. A fourth absence will result in the reduction of this portion of your grade by a full letter grade. A fifth absence will result in the reduction of this portion of your grade by two full letter grades. A sixth absence will result in the reduction of your final grade by one full letter grade. A seventh absence will result in the reduction of your final grade by two full letter grades. Anything more than seven absences results in failing the class (given how much class material and learning you’ll have missed out on).Arrival in class more than 15 minutes after it begins will be considered an absence. You are responsible for contacting me or a class member if you miss a class, and you are expected to be fully prepared for the next class session.
Your participation grade will also reflect the quality and thoughtfulness of your contribution in class, respect shown to class members, your attitude and role in small group exercises, and evidence of completion of reading assignments. Please remember, then, that ALL in-class discussions and exercises assume (and depend upon) you reading the assigned material. Review your syllabus frequently, and plan your workload accordingly.
Your final grade will be calculated as follows:
Weekly Schedule
UNIT 1: Foundations for Reading/Writing Technology
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
UNIT 2: Technology Today / The Internet: What, Where, Who
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
UNIT 3: Technology Past / From Mail Art to Bulletin Board Systems
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
UNIT 4: Subversions Past and Present to Reimagine the Future
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Source: Kentucky.com -- State
Kentucky’s Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the governor’s authority to issue coronavirus-related restrictions on businesses and individuals to try to contain the spread of COVID-19. The ruling delivered a victory … Click to Continue »
Source: Hacker News
Source: Ars Technica
Apple's "One More Thing" event is all about Macs. Here's the scoop on Apple's latest chip, the M1, which is the first ARM-based computer chip the company is making in-house.
The M1 is the first computer chip built on a 5nm process with 16 billion transistors. Optimized for Apple's lower-power systems with minimal size and maximum efficiency, there are four performance cores and four efficiency cores in the CPU. Pound for pound, Apple says it has the highest CPU performance per watt, and the four efficiency cores alone match the performance of a dual-core MacBook Air while using much less power. This should contribute to longer battery life and better efficiency in low-power tasks like checking emails, for instance.
The integrated graphics card has eight cores and can process up to 2.6 teraflops, making it the world's fastest integrated graphics chip in a computer. In concert with the 16-core neural engine, which is capable of 11 trillion processes per second, Apple says apps like Garage Band can handle three times more instruments and effect plugins, while Final Cut Pro, for instance, can render complex timelines up to six-times faster. Compared to "previous-generation Macs," Apple says the M1 delivers "up to 3.5x faster CPU performance, up to 6x faster GPU performance, and up to 15x faster machine learning" with up to double the battery life.
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Source: Engadget
Source: Hacker News
