feed on feeds - 2016/07/01 - items 0 to 15

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Ars Technica: Frontier submitted a court filing last week supporting ATT's efforts to sue local governments in Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky to stop a new ordinance designed to give Google Fiber and similar companies access to utility poles. They're concerned the ordinances will spread to other states. Frontier's filing said, "the issues raised by the case may have important implications for Frontier's business and may impact the development of law in jurisdictions throughout the country where Frontier operates." The ordinance in Louisville lets companies like Google Fiber install wires even if ATT doesn't respond to requests or rejects requests to attach lines. Companies don't have to notify ATT when they want to move ATT's wires to make room for their own wires, assuming the work won't cause customer outages. ATT claims that the ordinance lets competitors "seize ATT's property." Frontier is urging the court to consider the nationwide implications of upholding Louisville's ordinance, saying Louisville's rule "is unprecedented" because "it drastically expands the rights of third parties to use privately owned utility poles, giving non-owners unfettered access to [a] utility's property without the [...] utility in some cases even having knowledge that such third-party intrusion on its facilities is occurring." Frontier said companies should be required to negotiation access with the owners if they didn't pay to install the utility poles. They urged the court to deny Louisville Metro's motion to dismiss ATT's complaint.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Obama administration admits that drone strikes have killed civilians but limits the number to between 64 and 116.

NASA has released an Apple TV app that is sure to keep space geeks busy for weeks. The app for the fourth-generation Apple TV has images, video, satellite tracking and even a radio station with a pop-music soundtrack.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

HP says it plans to provide companies with personal computers and other devices as part of a service. Corporate customers of HP's new initiative dubbed "device-as-a-service" will be able to pay a fixed monthly fee per employee for devices, eliminating the need to pay the retail cost upfront for hardware. From a report on eWeek:The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company unveiled a DaaS (device-as-a-service) initiative, one that has already been up and running with several of its clients for the last few months. As more and more millennials come into the work force, they expect to see light, fast, small, and up-to-date tools to use, because that's what they're used to, and their tools are like a badge of honor, HPI's Vice-President and General Manager of Support Services Bill Avey said. "Older employees might want bigger screen and keyboards. The point is, work tools need to fit the work force, and as workforces become more diverse, the tools must adjust fit the needs," Avey said. Otherwise, Avey said, employees will find workarounds in so-called shadow IT (using their own laptops, smartphones, tablets and applications) to get the job done -- which is always a nightmare for enterprise security professionals.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kate Conger, reporting for TechCrunch:Amazon retailers sometimes go to extreme lengths to guarantee good reviews, as security developer Matthew Garrett recently discovered when he wrote a one-star review of an internet-connected electric socket. When Garrett politely pointed out that the socket in question was woefully insecure, he received emails from the manufacturer claiming that the review would get employees fired and that other reviewers were campaigning to get Garrett's review taken down. The socket in question is the AuYou Wi-Fi Switch, a $30 device that lets you turn the power from a wall outlet on and off using your phone. [...] But like so many Internet of Things devices, the AuYou switch seems to have a serious security flaw. As Garrett explains in his review, if your phone is connected to your home Wi-Fi, it sends the on/off command to the socket directly. But if you're not home, your phone sends the command to a server in China, which then passes the command along to the socket. "The command packets look like they're encrypted, but in reality there's no real cryptography here at all," Garrett explained in his review. [...] "Just now my boss has blamed me, and he said if I do not remove this bad review, he will quit me. Please help me," the representative wrote. "Could you please change your bad review into good?" Garrett responded that he would update the review if the manufacturer fixed the flaw. The AuYou representative insisted she would be fired if the review was not updated.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kate Conger, reporting for TechCrunch:Amazon retailers sometimes go to extreme lengths to guarantee good reviews, as security developer Matthew Garrett recently discovered when he wrote a one-star review of an internet-connected electric socket. When Garrett politely pointed out that the socket in question was woefully insecure, he received emails from the manufacturer claiming that the review would get employees fired and that other reviewers were campaigning to get Garrett's review taken down. The socket in question is the AuYou Wi-Fi Switch, a $30 device that lets you turn the power from a wall outlet on and off using your phone. [...] But like so many Internet of Things devices, the AuYou switch seems to have a serious security flaw. As Garrett explains in his review, if your phone is connected to your home Wi-Fi, it sends the on/off command to the socket directly. But if you're not home, your phone sends the command to a server in China, which then passes the command along to the socket. "The command packets look like they're encrypted, but in reality there's no real cryptography here at all," Garrett explained in his review. [...] "Just now my boss has blamed me, and he said if I do not remove this bad review, he will quit me. Please help me," the representative wrote. "Could you please change your bad review into good?" Garrett responded that he would update the review if the manufacturer fixed the flaw. The AuYou representative insisted she would be fired if the review was not updated.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bernie had a good idea, but we can do better.

Let's start a People's PAC.

The purpose of the PAC is to produce and run commercials that play in swing states and present ideas and facts in compelling ways that none of the candidates are telling people about.

For example, Bernie and Trump both talk down trade deals like NAFTA and TPP. Sure they suck jobs out of the US (so they say), but did you know they also keep prices low at Walmart and Safeway?

So here's an ad.

First, talk to economists and ask for a consensus on what a trade war with China, for example, would do to prices of things real Americans buy all the time. Electronics, food, lawn furniture, clothes, household items.
Then walk through the aisles of a store and take pictures of items, and then say what the price was before the trade war, and what the price will be after.
It might be worth paying a lot more for these necessities, because it might mean more Americans have jobs. Might not too, because it could easily mean a depression.

Okay so how to fund it?

Kickstarter, or Indiegogo. Or a new site just for peer-to-peer PACs.

What kind of talent is needed?

People who know how to...

create ads.
raise money.
buy media.

What else?

I think it's inevitable that we will have PACs that don't endorse candidates and are funded purely by people with small donations that expose lies that cause people to vote against their interests.

When I mentioned this idea on Twitter, Mark Barrington said but HRC is anti-free-trade pacts (and therefore pro-trade-war). That's fine. People should just know what they're voting for. Period. Nothing more than that.

Bernie had a good idea, but we can do better.

Let's start a People's PAC.

The purpose of the PAC is to produce and run commercials that play in swing states and present ideas and facts in compelling ways that none of the candidates are telling people about.

For example, Bernie and Trump both talk down trade deals like NAFTA and TPP. Sure they suck jobs out of the US (so they say), but did you know they also keep prices low at Walmart and Safeway?

So here's an ad.

First, talk to economists and ask for a consensus on what a trade war with China, for example, would do to prices of things real Americans buy all the time. Electronics, food, lawn furniture, clothes, household items.
Then walk through the aisles of a store and take pictures of items, and then say what the price was before the trade war, and what the price will be after.
It might be worth paying a lot more for these necessities, because it might mean more Americans have jobs. Might not too, because it could easily mean a depression.

Okay so how to fund it?

Kickstarter, or Indiegogo. Or a new site just for peer-to-peer PACs.

What kind of talent is needed?

People who know how to...

create ads.
raise money.
buy media.

What else?

I think it's inevitable that we will have PACs that don't endorse candidates and are funded purely by people with small donations that expose lies that cause people to vote against their interests.

When I mentioned this idea on Twitter, Mark Barrington said but HRC is anti-free-trade pacts (and therefore pro-trade-war). That's fine. People should just know what they're voting for. Period. Nothing more than that.

Tesla Motors has reported first fatality involving its 'autopilot' cars.

A maker of SD cards with embedded Wi-Fi will disable services and some features for models sold as recently as March 2015.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Interface to the Tokyo Subway Map.

An object-oriented interface to Ogg Vorbis information and comment fields.

Interface to the Tokyo Subway Map.