Monthly Archives: December 2014

United Airlines and Orbitz resort to suing Skiplagged.com which is better and takes advantage of airlines’ stupid fee structure

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Skiplagged.com found out that you can buy a cheaper ticket from A – B if you buy a ticket to C where B is a stop on the way (A – B – C) and then just get off at B.

For example, a customer buying a ticket from New York to Los Angeles, where competition is high, could get a lower rate than a flight to Chicago, but could simply get off the plane during a stop in Chicago and avoid a higher fare.

United and Orbitz are going all ballistic on Aktarer Zaman’s (Skiplagged.com) arse because of not liking a) their own stupidity exposed and b) not liking competition.

Airline, travel site sue over 'hacked' airfares.

Skiplagged is taking contributions to his legal defence, he probably needs it.

Five Mechanical Gaming Keyboards Compared

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When you’re on the path to becoming a power user, you begin to notice certain things that the average person might not. One of those is the difference between typing on a sweet mechanical keyboard with luxurious key action versus pounding away on a run-of-the-mill squishy plank that relies on mushy membranes to register your keystrokes. The difference may seem subtle to the uninitiated, though even casual typists can recognize that there’s something inherently superior about typing on a mechanical keyboard, even if they can’t pinpoint what exactly it is.Of course, we know it’s the mechanical key switches that are responsible for elevating the typing experience. These are better than the rubber domes found in membrane keyboards that used to dominate the market in a number of ways, including feel, responsiveness, and durability.

via Know Your Type: Five Mechanical Gaming Keyboards Compared.

Dutch gov sends cops to 3 times as many houses as there are guilty parties at those houses, scares 4500 people witless, will scare 30000 next year

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Ah the wonders of big data. Needlessly scaring twice as many people as guilty people you find with a valid search warrant and invasion of innocent people’s privacy is being lauded as a success by the NL Government and will result in 30000 people’s houses being needlessly searched next year.
30.000 onschuldige Nederlanders opgejaagd door overheid – Webwereld.

UK gov putting a massive internet censorship scheme online

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BT, Sky, and Virgin Media are hijacking people’s web connections to force customers to make a decision about family-friendly web filters. The move comes as the December deadline imposed by prime minister David Cameron looms, with ISPs struggling to get customers to say yes or no to the controversial adult content blocks.

The messages, which vary by ISP, appear during browser sessions when a user tries to access any website. BT, Sky,TalkTalk and Virgin Media are required to ask all their customers if they want web filters turned on or off, with the government saying it wants to create a "family friendly" Internet free from pornography, gambling, extreme violence and other content inappropriate for children. But the measures being taken by ISPs have been described as "completely unnecessary" and "heavy handed" by Internet rights groups.

via BT, Sky, and Virgin “hijacking” browsers to push porn blocks | Ars Technica.

I think the unnamed “Internet rights groups” would do better to criticise the Tory policy of censoring the internet at all.

Staples: Breach may have affected 1.16 million customers’ cards

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Staples believes that point-of-sale systems at 115 Staples locations were infected with malware that thieves may have used to steal customers’ names, payment card numbers, expiration dates and card verification codes, Staples said on Friday. At all but two of those stores, the malware would have had access to customer data for purchases made between August 10 and September 16 of this year. At the remaining two stores, the malware was active from July 20 through September 16

via Staples: Breach may have affected 1.16 million customers' cards – Fortune.

The end of Democracy in NL

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The Netherlands is now officially moving towards becoming a banana republic. Foreign media hasn’t really seemed to catch on to this, but there’s a very important cabinets crisis happening in the Netherlands at the moment. A translated version for English people: An incredibly stupid law* was stopped in the senate by 3 brave PvdA** senators led by Guusje ter Horst (who’s husband is a doctor) who actually stood up for their priciples. Upon hearing this apparently surprise result, the VVD minister who submitted the law stamped her little feet and threatened to resign. Of course, that would have made the VVD leave their coalition with the PvdA, bringing the whole parliamant down and forcing re-elections on two parties that are doing badly in the polls (I wonder why?). Yes, Dutch politics is not only that petty, but also that silly.

Now the majority parliament, consisting of the PvdA and the VVD*** seems to have found a way to push the law through anyway if the law is resubmitted and stopped in the senate again. They will use something called an AMvB, which translates to a general directive.

If they do this, then what is the point of the senate at all? Or the whole democratic process. Shameful that Diederik Samson and Mark Rutte, the NL heads of the left and right parties and their cronies are both taking down the rule of law and democratic process together.

Fortunately the minority parties (called a constructive minority because they will every so often support the coalition in the senate) are having none of it and will hopefully stop something like this from going through somehow.

* allowing insurance companies to determine which health organisations their clients could use and be reimbursed for. The net effect of this is to give insurance companies huge leverage in a market they already have too much power in. They can determine prices, treatments or threaten (small and large) hospitals (eg) with no more customers.

** Partij van de Arbeid is a bit like the UK labour party. It is left leaning.

*** VVD is like the UK conservatives or US republicans – a very right leaning party

Dutch Summary in NRC

Rresearchers may have stumbled upon the secret to youthful skin

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Scientists at the University of B.C. searching for ways to slow the deterioration of blood vessels may have stumbled on to the key to youthful skin.

While exploring the effects of the protein-degrading enzyme Granzyme B on blood vessels during heart attacks, professor David Granville couldn’t help noticing that mice engineered to lack the enzyme had beautiful skin at the end of the experiment, while normal mice showed signs of age.

“This is one of those moments that we live for in science,” said Granville, a researcher for Providence Health Care.

“We were interested in the effects of aging on blood vessels; we had no idea (the absence of this enzyme) would have any effect on their skin.”

The discovery pushed Granville’s research in an unexpected new direction.

The researchers built a mechanized rodent tanning salon and exposed mice engineered to lack the enzyme and normal mice to UV light three times a week for 20 weeks, enough to cause redness, but not to burn.

At the end of the experiment, the engineered mice still had smooth, unblemished skin, while the normal mice were deeply wrinkled.

“About 80 to 90 per cent of visible skin aging is caused by sunlight,” said Granville. “We found that by knocking out this gene we could markedly protect against the loss of collagen and it prevented wrinkling in these mice.”

via 'One of those moments that we live for in science': UBC researchers may have stumbled upon the secret to youthful skin.

Identify the maker of a movie by the way the screen shakes

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Egocentric cameras are being worn by an increasing number of users, among them many security forces worldwide. GoPro cameras already penetrated the mass market, and Google Glass may follow soon. As head-worn cameras do not capture the face and body of the wearer, it may seem that the anonymity of the wearer can be preserved even when the video is publicly distributed.We show that motion features in egocentric video provide biometric information, and the identity of the user can be determined quite reliably from a few seconds of video. Biometrics are extracted by training Convolutional Neural Network CNN architectures on coarse optical flow.Egocentric video biometrics can prevent theft of wearable cameras by locking the camera when worn by people other than the owner. In video sharing services, this Biometric measure can help to locate automatically all videos shot by the same user. An important message in this paper is that people should be aware that sharing egocentric video will compromise their anonymity.

via [1411.7591] Egocentric Video Biometrics.

EU Mandates eCall tracking system in your new car from 2018

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The European Parliament has reached a deal with national ministers to introduce a mandatory “eCall” system for all new cars from April 2018.

However, although the system would automatically call the 112 emergency number in the event of a crash, euro lawmakers say that cars will not be continuously tracked.

“It will be illegal to use eCall to track a driver’s movements or to misuse location data, which must be sent only to the emergency services,” said Olga Sehnalova, the Czech politician who helped broker the deal.

The proposed rules would also follow the principle of data-minimisation, with only basic details such as the class of vehicle, the type of fuel used, the time of the accident, and the exact location given to the emergency services.

Nor is any of the data gathered allowed to be passed on to third parties without the explicit consent of the person involved.

via EU law bods: New eCall crash system WON'T TRACK YOU. Really • The Register.

I’m very curious how the system knows you’re in a crash…

FIDO v1 out – broadly adopted passwordless authentication for (eventually) everything

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“Today, we celebrate an achievement that will define the point at which the old world order of passwords and PINs started to wither and die,” said Michael Barrett, president of the FIDO Alliance. “FIDO Alliance pioneers can forever lay claim to ushering in the ‘post password’ era, which is already revealing new dimensions in Internet services and digital commerce.”

The specifications outline a new standard for devices, servers and client software, including browsers, browser plugins, and native app subsystems. Any website or cloud application can interface with a broad variety of existing and future FIDO­enabled authenticators, ranging from biometrics to hardware tokens, to be used by consumers, enterprises, service providers, governments and organizations of all types.

Keeping with the FIDO Alliance mission, both specifications are unencumbered by FIDO member patents. Members are free to implement and market solutions around FIDO­enabled strong authentication, and non­members are free to deploy those solutions. As previously announced, current implementations available in the market include those from Nok Nok Labs, Synaptics, Alibaba, PayPal, Samsung, Google, Yubico and Plug­Up.
via FIDO Alliance.

IBM’s Watson Analytics enters public beta | ZDNet

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Users of Watson Analytics feed in their own raw data, say, in the form of a spreadsheet, which the service then crunches with its own statistical analysis to highlight associations between different variables. It saves execs from needing to know how to write their own scripts or understand statistics in order to derive meaning from their data.

via IBM's Watson Analytics enters public beta | ZDNet.

NASA tests aircraft with shape shifting wings

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FlexFoil is a shape-changing assembly that replaces the flaps on a wing and can alter shape in flight to produce seamless bendable and twistable aerofoil surfaces. This allows the FlexFoil to act like a flap in its various positions while still providing an unbroken air surface. This makes for a more streamlined wing and reduces noise during takeoffs and landings. Importantly, it’s designed not only for new aircraft designs, but for retrofitting to existing ones.

via NASA tests aircraft with shape shifting wings.

Sony Data Breach gets worse and worse

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The data dump, which was reviewed extensively by BuzzFeed News, includes employee criminal background checks, salary negotiations, and doctors’ letters explaining the medical rationale for leaves of absence. There are spreadsheets containing the salaries of 6,800 global employees, along with Social Security numbers for 3,500 U.S. staff. And there is extensive documentation of the company’s operations, ranging from the script for an unreleased pilot written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan to the results of sales meetings with local TV executives.

The documents made public this weekend, covering the company’s human resources, sales, and marketing teams, among others, are just a fraction of approximately 100TB of data the hackers claim to have taken from Sony. They say it will all be made freely available online, once they figure out how to distribute such an enormous amount of information.

via A Look Through The Sony Pictures Data Hack: This Is As Bad As It Gets – BuzzFeed News.

GlassWire Network Security Monitor & Firewall Tool

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GlassWire displays your network activity on an easy to understand graph while searching for unusual Internet behavior that could indicate malware or violations of your privacy. Once unusual network activity is discovered you’re instantly alerted with detailed information so you can protect your computer, privacy, and data.

via GlassWire Network Security Monitor & Firewall Tool.

The Newest Sony Data Breach Exposes Thousands Of Passwords

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Excel and Word documents plainly expose thousands of computer log-in, financial, and web services passwords, including the Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace passwords for hundreds of major motion picture accounts.

via It Gets Worse: The Newest Sony Data Breach Exposes Thousands Of Passwords – BuzzFeed News.

Oh dear, Sony is really hammering themselves on this one

Apple Deleted Rivals’ Songs from Users’ iPods

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When a user who had downloaded music from a rival service tried to sync an iPod to the user’s iTunes library, Apple would display an error message and instruct the user to restore the factory settings, Coughlin said. When the user restored the settings, the music from rival services would disappear, he said.

via Apple Deleted Rivals’ Songs from Users’ iPods – Digits – WSJ.