feed on feeds - 2019/12/18 - items 0 to 15

The UK government will create a technology regulator next year to police companies such as Facebook and Google after Brexit, Financial Times reported Wednesday [may be paywalled], citing several people who were involved in the process. From the report: The regulator will be given powers to implement a range of new rules, including an enforceable code of conduct for the biggest groups and greater data accessibility for consumers. The decision follows widespread calls for a curb on big tech's power, including a report published on Wednesday by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority that outlined a new regulatory regime for the digital sector.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A non-standard and somewhat weird password reset operation is currently underway at a German university, where more than 38,000 students and staff were asked this week to stand in line with their ID card and a piece of paper to receive new passwords for their email accounts. From a report: All of this is going on at the Justus Liebig University (JLU) in Gieben, a town north of Frankfurt, Germany. The university suffered a malware infection last week. While the name or the nature of the malware strain was not disclosed, the university's IT staff considered the infection severe enough to take down its entire IT and server infrastructure. The university's network has been down since December 8, and all computers have been isolated and disconnected from each other. For the past days, IT staff have used antivirus scanners loaded on more than 1,200 USB flash drives to scan each JLU computer for malware.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ali Bongo suffered a stroke 14 months ago during a visit to Saudi Arabia and has rarely been seen in public since.

Government concessions have failed to satisfy protesters who've vowed to stay in the streets until their demands are met

Billions of dollars pledged and promises to open more refugee settlement places touted by UN as key results of summit.

Protesters threw bottles and police opened fire with foam bullets as tensions boiled over in Barcelona.

Fewer reporters have been killed at work this year than in the last two decades, but more are being imprisoned.

The former president - now in Argentina - called the arrest warrant 'unfair, illegal and unconstitutional'.

Speaking of Russia, whose agents have been accused of worldwide hacking operations, but someone at the Kremlin has apparently forgotten to inform Vladimir Putin of the importance of cyber-security. From a report: Putin, 67, appears to have the obsolete Microsoft Windows XP operating system installed on computers in his office at the Kremlin and at his official Novo-Ogaryovo residence near Moscow, according to images released by his press service. Both computers have the Kremlin towers set as their desktop backgrounds. [...] Moscow is gradually phasing out Microsoft and Google on government computers in favour of Russia's Astra Linux operating system software and domestic browsers such as Yandex. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, did not comment when asked why Putin continues to use an antiquated Microsoft operating system.