I started sending these emails out to my office, just a selection of some of the digital rights/free software related articles I’ve read over the past week. Here is the list from last week.
Exciting news
- Hollywood gets its own open-source foundation – Hollywood and LF are
getting together to start a(nother) foundation geared towards sharing
code used for films –
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/10/hollywood-gets-its-own-open-source-foundation/ - An 11-year old changed election results… – Kids these days, hacking
voting web sites, a fun activity for the whole family –
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/an-11-year-old-changed-election-results-on-a-replica-florida-state-website-in-under-10-minutes - EU aims to abolish planned obsolescence – this isn’t about right to
repair, per se, but it does cover making repairs accessible –
https://www.retaildetail.eu/en/news/elektronica/eu-aims-abolish-planned-obsolescence
Less exciting news
- Hackers found a (not-so-easy) way to make the Amazon Echo a spy bug –
By modifying the hardware of one Echo, people can sneak into other Echos
on the same network –
https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-turn-amazon-echo-into-spy-bug/ - Your phone is listening and it’s not paranoia – Just because you’ve
nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be worried about monitoring –
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/wjbzzy/your-phone-is-listening-and-its-not-paranoid
Technical things
- L1 Terminal Fault – New bug in an Intel design allows malicious actors
to “infer values of data” –
https://software.intel.com/security-software-guidance/software-guidance/l1-terminal-fault
and https://lwn.net/Articles/762570/
China
- Google employees protest secret work on censored search engine for
China – remember how Google is building a special search engine for
application in China? Apparently Googlers are revolting or something. –
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-protest-search-censored-china.html - From laboratory in the far west, China’s surveillance state spreads
quietly – China is surveilling it’s population in new and exciting ways
–
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-monitoring-insight/from-laboratory-in-far-west-chinas-surveillance-state-spreads-quietly-idUSKBN1KZ0R3?il=0
Privacy and surveillance
- 5 tips for helping children think critically about privacy – I think
the title is pretty descriptive. This is from our friends at PIA. –
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2018/08/5-tips-for-helping-children-think-critically-about-privacy/