Phone company is watching…,Feds Wait Until…,p*rn movie pirate counter-sues…,bring down powerful people…,AC/DC virus…,Eavesdrop on Your Conversations…,Tokyo, Seoul, and Paris get faster…,Samsung: Apple…,RIP Andre Hedrick…,Gaming Catastrophe…1.Your phone company is watching (TED Talk with Standing Ovations)
2.Feds Wait Until Late Friday To Admit That, Yeah, They Ignored The 4th Amendment
While Senator Wyden has beenbangingthe drum about privacy violations committed by the federal government under the FISA Amendments Act for quite some time, the rest of Congress seems perfectly content tostay ignorantand pretend that there’s no possible way that the feds might be abusing the powers that let them spy on nearly anyone without much (if any) oversight. So it’s interesting that Wyden was finally able to squeeze out of the Director of National Intelligencean admission that, oh yeah, the feds violated the 4th Amendment. As covered by the always awesome reporting by Spencer Ackerman at Wired:
3.Accused p*rn movie pirate counter-sues for defamation and millions in damages; he says he never downloaded an adult movie in his life, and he has filed an elaborate counter-suit; he wants millions of dollars in damages for defamation, emotional distress and invasion of privacy, among other things
One of the many alleged BitTorrent users to fall victim to copyright trolls in recent years has launched an impressive counterattack against a plaintiff who accused him of downloading an adult movie. Jeff Fantalis of Louisville wants millions of dollars in damages for defamation, emotional distress and invasion of privacy, plus a prominent retraction in a local newspaper. Fantalis further asks the court to rule that p*rn cant be copyrighted as it is not a useful art.
4. When you make something that can bring down powerful people – powerful people will pay attention to you
Twenty-one-year-old college student Nadim Kobeissi is from Canada, Lebanonand the internet.He is the creator ofCryptocat, a project to combine my love of cryptography and cats, he explained to an overflowing audience ofhackers at the HOPE conferenceon Saturday, July 14.The site, crypto.cat, hasa chunky, 8-bit sensibility, with a big-eyed binary cat in the corner. The visitor has the option to name, then enter a chat. Theres some explanatory text, but little else. Its deceptively simple for a web app that can save lives, subvert governments and frustrate marketers. But as little as two years ago such a site was considered to be likely impossible to code.
5.Iranian nuclear facilities hit by AC/DC virus that turns off automated system operations, turns on PCs at night playing ‘Thunderstruck’.
Iranian nuclear facilities have reportedly been attacked by a music virus, turning on lab PCs at night and blasting AC/DCs Thunderstruck.Mikko Hypponen, Chief Researcher at Finnish digital security firm F-secure, publicly released a letter he received from an unnamed Iranian scientist. The researcher, who claimed to work for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said that another virus has struck the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran and a secret underground research facility at Fordo, southwest of Tehran.
6. Skype Won’t Say Whether It Can Eavesdrop on Your Conversations
New surveillance laws being proposed in countries from theUnited StatestoAustralia would force makers of online chat software to build in backdoors for wiretapping. For years, the popular video chat service Skype has resisted taking part in online surveillancebut that may have changed. And if it has, Skypes not telling.
7. Tokyo, Seoul, and Paris get faster, cheaper broadband than US cities: Study finds American consumers paying higher prices for slower connections
Anew studyfrom the New America Foundation suggests that the United States is lagging in the broadband speed race. The study compared high-speed Internet service in major cities around the world, and found that high-speed broadband service was dramatically more expensive and slower in the United States than in leading countries outside the United States. The authors blame these disappointing results on bad public policy.
8. Samsung: “Apple, which sold its first iPhone nearly twenty years after Samsung started developing mobile phone technology, could not have sold a single iPhone without the benefit of Samsungs patented technology.”
Another day, anotherApple(AAPL) vs.Samsung(005930) trial. The two consumer electronics companies are preparing to do battle in San Jose, California next week, and now-public court documents shed light on the positions each firm is taking. On Tuesday,Apple told Samsung exactly what it thinks its technology patents are worth(spoiler: barely anything at all), and subsequent filings from Samsung reveal that the South Korea-based company has a few choice words for Apple as well.
9.RIP Andre Hedrick: The engineer who kept the PC open
ObitAndre Hedrick, a principal engineer and operating system architect at Cisco Systems and a Linux kernel contributor, has died. He leaves behind a wife, four young children and many friends.Andre made a significant contribution to personal computing history in a way few people fully realise.
10.Windows 8 is a “Gaming Catastrophe” According to Newell
Valve headand one-time Microsoft employeeGabe Newell has branded Windows 8 “a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space” at videogame conference Casual Connect in Seattle. The Valve boss continued, saying that in the fallout from Windows 8, “we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people.” Newell criticised Windows 8 while talking about the future of the gaming industry, and you can read everything he said atVentureBeat.
