Archive for 2012/04/17

Highlights:

  • Make sure to create a big fuss on the internet and you can go ahead and throw your own party. The police will be there to pick up the pieces
  • The police has no say in this country. Everybody in this country seems to have a right to his own party, no matter whether the police is able to handle it
  • Politicians have allowed themselves to be taken hostage by hooligans and the Royal Dutch Football Association
  • The Union doesn’t not expect any support from Dutch citizens, who remain silent
  • The Union wonders why football clubs cannot throw parties in their own stadium, but rather celebrate it on the streets of The Netherlands
  • We’ll leave the decision to the Dutch government administration. Nobody is listening to our professional opinion anyway
Dutch language news article:


Judge Allows Strict Interpretation Of Previous Verdicts By Dutch Pirate Party. “Generic Proxy” http://proxy.piratenpartij.nl/ Can Remain Active. More Targeted “Reverse Proxies” Need To Be Taken Down

Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2789467/entertainmentindustrie-verliest-van-piratenpartij.html

Court document (Dutch language):
http://www.scribd.com/doc/89843601/Piratenpartij-Brein-Tijdelijke-Voorlopige-Voorziening

Pirate Party Press Release (Dutch language):
http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/piratenpersbericht.html

Previously:
http://vrritti.com/?s=brein

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57415210-93/consumers-turning-to-facebook-twitter-for-health-advice/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57415194-93/nicki-minaj-dumps-twitter-account-to-protest-web-piracy/

http://gizmodo.com/5902667/pin+protected-hard-drive-dock-is-like-an-atm-for-your-files

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/seo/netgear-inadvertently-serving-blu-ray-movie-rips-on-web-site/4999

https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/191900489988849664

Dutch language news article:
http://www.security.nl/artikel/41144/1/Google_waarschuwt_20.000_gehackte_websites.html

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120416/12020318506/copyright-maximalists-try-to-regroup-figure-out-how-to-fight-back-against-public.shtml

More:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120417/04502518523/revolving-door-between-mpaa-federal-government.shtml

The internet overseer also confirmed it was first warned of a data leak vulnerability in mid-March, weeks before it eventually pulled the plug on the new TLD registration website.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/17/icann_tas_still_offline/

http://www.thelocal.se/40306/20120417/

Before Megaupload was shutdown the company was preparing to go public and enter the US stock market with a multi-billion dollar IPO. While the US authorities were conducting their criminal investigation, Megaupload had discussions with some of the ‘Big Four’ auditors and several of the world’s largest investments banks. The top of the financial world was looking at a huge potential tech IPO with a billion dollar valuation, but these plans ended abruptly in January.

Besides cooperating with the top audit firms, Megaupload also approached several of the world’s leading investment banks to assist with the IPO plan.

More:
http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-worked-on-a-multi-billion-dollar-ipo-120417/

Google essentially has remade a major part of its massive internal network, providing the company a bonanza in savings and efficiency. Google has done this by brashly adopting a new and radical open-source technology called OpenFlow.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/going-with-the-flow-google/

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/04/nasa-tournament-lab-holds-a-contest-for-software-ideas.ars

XS4ALL‘s mailserver and all the websites operated and hosted by the Dutch ISP are rendered inaccessible for now. It is currently unknown why XS4ALL has been targeted or by whom

Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2789186/xs4all-kampt-met-storing-ddos-aanval.html

As a response to recent legal actions by BREIN, Webwereld.nl explains how to use Google Translate as a proxy and also explains that uploading pirated content is illegal in The Netherlands whereas downloading is not.

This type of circumvention may not work in case of remotely triggered blackhole filtering, depending on the follow-up file sharing connections and data exchange between source (website, tracker, server, peer) and destination (internet subscriber).

Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/analyse/110205/google-translate-doet-dienst-als-pirate-bay-proxy.html

Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/110206/verhagen–kroes-niet-publiekelijk-tegen-open-kabel.html

Between 2006 and 2007, the 33-year-old Norwegian mass killer spent his days and nights immersed in a world of fantasy monsters, wizards, and knights performing violent “missions”.

Breivik broke into a broad smile when Mr Holden projected an image of “Justicar Andersnordic”, Breivik’s avatar in the game, onto a screen in the courtroom.

Mr Holden said he would refer to “Justicar Andersnordic” again in the trial, suggesting he may see a connection between the Justicar level in the game, and the position of ‘Knight Justiciar’ Breivik claims to hold in real life in the Knights Templar, a secret anti-Islamic organisation.

More:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/9207691/Anders-Behring-Breivik-spent-a-year-playing-World-of-Warcraft-role-playing-game-online.html

Jacob Appelbaum: Ultrasurf is software produced by the UltraReach company for censorship circumvention, privacy, security and anonymity. Unfortunately for them, I found their claims to be overstated and I found a number of serious problems with Ultrasurf.
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/ultrasurf-definitive-review

UltraReach: Tor repeatedly and knowingly makes false and outdated statements about Ultrasurf, which are detailed in our full response
http://ultrasurf.us/Ultrasurf-response-to-Tor-definitive-review.html

See also:
http://vrritti.com/?s=appelbaum

As alleged in the indictment, the Farmers Market, previously known as Adamflowers, operated on the TOR network. According to the indictment, TOR is a circuit of encrypted connections through relays on the TOR network that can be downloaded on home computers. TOR allows websites and electronic mail communications to completely mask IP address information by spreading communications over a series of computers, or relays, located throughout the world. The online marketplaces have accepted Western Union, Pecunix, PayPal, I-Golder, and cash as payment for illegal drug sales.

According to investigators, this drug trafficking organization (“DTO”) attempted to operate online in secrecy, utilizing the TOR network, IP anonymizers, and covert currency transactions; but investigators were able to infiltrate the DTO and its technology during the course of the investigation.

Much more:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/cac/Pressroom/2012/045.html

The US and China have been discreetly engaging in “war games” amid rising anger in Washington over the scale and audacity of Beijing-co-ordinated cyber attacks on western governments and big business, the Guardian has learned.

State department and Pentagon officials, along with their Chinese counterparts, were involved in two war games last year that were designed to help prevent a sudden military escalation between the sides if either felt they were being targeted. Another session is planned for May.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/16/us-china-cyber-war-games

http://gizmodo.com/5902583/how-hulu-grew-into-a-network-tv-challenger

The 20% that will save humanity

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/16/pew_american_luddites/ 

China’s IT ministry has warned domestic handset makers to beware of getting sucked into the escalating number of intellectual property disputes currently disrupting the smartphone industry.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/17/china_ip_warning_mobile_phones/

According to the reports, the fixed cameras can spot the faces of evil-doers even when they are on the move and can also see through cosmetic surgery procedures which some criminals use to avoid detection.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/17/china_vide_surveillance_face_recongition/

It has dropped MHP as its interactive primary broadcasting protocol and adopting Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV). The standard is already taking off in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Spain, and to this we can now add most of the Nordic countries. This leaves the UK, which has instead chosen its own YouView standard, more and more isolated.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/17/scandinavia_joins_procession_to_hbbtv_in_europe/

Taking aim at fake reviews, which they say can seriously damage online businesses.The researchers present an algorithm called GSRank which they hope can be deployed against review fraud

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/17/seeing_through_sockpuppets/

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-ad-rates-surge-41/11854

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/proposed-eu-law-would-have-hit-google-with-nearly-1b-in-fines.ars

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/oracle-tells-jury-you-cant-just-step-on-somebodys-intellectual-property.ars

The company AV Concepts, the San Diego-based company behind the Tupac performance, has been pretty quiet about the precise details

More:
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/04/tupac-hologram-merely-pretty-cool-optical-illusion.ars

See also:

According to a spokesperson for Dre, the lifelike image of Shakur was created by Hollywood effects house Digital Domain, the Oscar-winning CG factory that made CG images of Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Jeff Bridges in TRON: Legacy, Kevin Bacon in X-Men: First Class and Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
http://gizmodo.com/5902582/tupac-hologram-creator-reveals-how-he-resurrected-the-rapper

I’ve understood that a lot of US readers misread me when I say that 9% in an election is a sensation. That’s because the United States and Europe have completely different election systems: in the United States, if you take 9% of the votes, you are crushed, down and out. In (most of) Europe, when you take 9% of the votes, you get 9% of the seats.

That’s why it is fantastic that the German Piratenpartei is polling at 13% and that several more are on the verge of breaking through.

More:
http://torrentfreak.com/impressions-from-the-pirate-parties-international-conference-120416/