2016 / Boing Boing

Company town + Internet of Things + Drones = total surveillance of remote mine workers
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/12/09/company-town-internet-of-thi.html

Rio Tinto is a giant UK/Australian mining corporation that operates many facilities in Australia’s remotest reaches, where there is no housing for workers, so the company ends up building “company towns” where their laborers live, closing the loop between home and worklife, and putting them both under control of a corporation ; now the company is flirting with the kind of “smart city” technology that has been tried elsewhere, but generally in places where the residents are citizens, not (...)

#Rio_Tinto #Sodexo #capteur #drone #géolocalisation #travail #surveillance (...)

##GPS

Sole and Despotic Dominion: how a 20th century copyright law is abolishing property for humans (but not corporations) / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/11/03/sole-and-despotic-dominion-ho.html

In the 18th century, William Blackstone wrote the seminal “Commentaries on the Laws of England,” which contained one of the foundational definitions of property: “that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.”

If you make a gadget with software inside it, you can simply add a thin skin of DRM to it, and configure the device so that the DRM has to be bypassed in order to do anything that lowers your profits. GM uses it to prevent third-party mechanics from diagnosing problems in their cars (and VW used it to prevent independent researchers from discovering that they were cheating on emissions tests). Philips uses it to make sure that you only buy Philips lightbulbs to go in your Philips sockets. Google’s Nest smart thermostats use it to make sure that only they can extend the device’s features, so they can promise power authorities that when the authority turns down your furnace, you can’t turn it back up again.

This is almost too good to be true. Every company has commercial preferences that they wished were legal obligations. Now, thanks to a stupid law from 1998 and the proliferation of cheap computation, every company can make their wish come true.

This is an affront to Blackstone. If the mere presence of a copyrighted work in a device means that its manufacturer never stops owning it, then it means that you can never start owning it. There’s a word for this: feudalism. In feudalism, property is the exclusive realm of a privileged few, and the rest of us are tenants on that property. In the 21st century, DMCA-enabled version of feudalism, the gentry aren’t hereditary toffs, they’re transhuman, immortal artificial life-forms that use humans as their gut-flora: limited liability corporations.

DDoS attack put out heating of apartments for the weekend in Finland

▻http://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2016/11/07/ddos-attack-leaves-finnish-apartments-without-heat

Both buildings are managed by Valtia, a facilities services company headquarted in Lappeenranta. Volta CEO Simo Rounela confirmed to Metropolitan.fi that the central heating and hot water systems in both buildings had been attacked. In attempt to fight off the attack, the systems rebooted — and subsequently got stuck in an endless loop. This is precisely the kind of thing that Chester Wisniewski at SophosLabs was concerned with when he urged makers (and users) of industrial control systems to take meaningful steps toward improving security.

▻http://boingboing.net/2016/11/08/winter-denial-of-service-attac.html

A DDoS attack that incidentally affected the internet connections for at least two housing blocks in Lappeenranta, Finland caused their heating systems to shut down, leaving their residents without heat in subzero weather.

After an hour, maintenance crews went on-site and shut down the internet links and switched the heating systems over to manual, restoring service.

The attack brought down the buildings’ access to DNS, causing the automated systems to cycle every five minutes, until the heat, ventilation and water all shut down.

#DDoS
#IoT

In 2000, the NSA hacked the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons - Cory Doctorow
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/11/06/in-2000-the-nsa-hacked-the-ha.html

A reader writes, “According to last week’s Shadow Brokers leak, the NSA compromised a DNS server of the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in September 2000, two years after the Iraq Liberation Act and Operation Desert Fox, but before the Bush election.”

The incredible and dying art of Japanese candy sculpture / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/10/26/the-incredible-and-dying-art-o.html

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Shinri Tezuka, 27, sculpts candy into beautiful, creepy, and very sweet creatures like goldfish and octopuses. The centuries-old practice is called amezaiku, but according to Great Big Story, “today there are only two artists left in Tokyo. Tezuka hopes his elaborate goldfish, frog and octopus designs will inspire the next generation of candy crafters to keep the tradition alive.”

#Japon #art #sucre

Trump hotels, faced with massive declines in bookings, rebrand as “Scion Hotels” / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/10/22/trump-hotels-faced-with-massi.html

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When estimating his net worth, Pepe the Cheeto is apt to include a multibillion dollar valuation for the “Trump” brand-name; but new Trump Hotels will be called “Scion” hotels, “a nod to the Trump family and to the tremendous success it has had with its businesses, including Trump Hotels, while allowing for a clear distinction between our luxury and lifestyle brands.”

Trump hotels say that the change to “Scion” has nothing to do with the fact that their bookings are way down, claiming that the polls showing the decline are rigged.

Trolling Trump with an Arabic billboard / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/10/22/trolling-trump-with-an-arabic.html

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The billboard went up in Dearborn, MI, which has a large number of Arabic speakers, and reads “Donald Trump, he can’t read this, but he is afraid of it” (a riff on the bags printed with “This text has no other purpose than to terrify those who are afraid of the Arabic language”).

#Trump #wtf

Turkish court fines bystander/tourist who sued police for shooting out his eye / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/10/20/turkish-court-fines-bystander.html

Shavkatbek Saipov was vacationing in Turkey in 2013 when he was hit in the eye by a teargas cannister fired by police during the brutal crackdown on the Occupy Gezi protests; he lost the eye and sued the Turkish police.

The court found that the police had indeed caused his injury, but denied his claim against them. The court then ordered him to reimburse the Turkish state for the cost of the trial, fining him 151 Turkish liras — about $50.

VERIFIED Mark Zuckerberg defends Facebook’s association with Peter Thiel / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/10/19/mark-zuckerberg-defends-facebo.html

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In what appears to be an internal Facebook post, Zuckerberg defends his company’s ongoing association with Peter Thiel — Facebook investor/board member and major donor to white-supremacist/pro-rape presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Billionaire tech investors back ballot initiative to purge homeless people from San Francisco / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/10/15/billionaire-tech-investors-bac.html
Les riches donnent pour les pauvres, surtout quand c’est pour les faire évacuer des villes où ils gênent les affaires.

Sequoia Capital Chairman Michael Moritz and angel investor Ron Conway have donated to San Francisco’s Proposition Q: if passed, “the city would give residents of tent encampments 24 hours’ notice to relocate to a shelter or accept a bus ticket out of town.”

Other San Francisco ballot initiatives propose to build houses for homeless people, which is literally the only proven way to fight homelessness.

Moritz, Conway and the rest of the ethnic cleansing squad are operating on the theory that people are homeless because they choose not to find a place to live, not because there is nowhere they can live. In San Francisco, only 13% of households have the $269,000+ annual income (triple the median income) necessary to afford the median-priced home — a fact linked to the city’s dysfunctional income segregation through city planning, massive cuts to HUD, Airbnb shenanigans, property speculation, and the incredible wealth-disparity in technology’s capital city.

#USA #logement #social

The Doonesbury Trump retrospective proves that Garry Trudeau had Drumpf’s number all along / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/09/29/the-doonesbury-trump-retrospec.html

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On September 14, 1987, Garry B Trudeau ran the first Doonesbury strip that mentioned Donald Trump, in which his characters marvel that New York’s “loudest and most visible asshole” had floated a political trial balloon, hinting that he would run for president; thus began 30 years of marveling at, mocking, and skewering Der Drumpf, so rattling the Short-Fingered Vulgarian that he felt the need to issue a series of wounded denunciations. Now, just in time for the election, Trudeau has released a collection of his Trump-themed strips, Yuge: 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump, just the thing to put the Republican nominee on tilt.

#bande_dessinée #USA #université

Muckrock and Motherboard launch $2,000 Thiel Fellowship to FOIA the crap out of Peter Thiel / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/09/16/muckrock-and-motherboard-launc.html

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Muckrock today announced a $1,000 grant for projects to increase public understanding of noted Donald Trump supporter and anti-Gawker-lawsuit-funder Peter Thiel. Motherboard matched the Muckrock reporting grant funds, and now the grant is $2,000.

Apply to MuckRock’s Thiel Fellowship
▻https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/sep/16/apply-thiel-fellowship

Apply to MuckRock’s Thiel Fellowship
One Year. $2,000*. Some requests just can’t wait.
Written by Michael Morisy
Edited by JPat Brown

Peter Thiel - co-founder of both PayPal and Palantir and an early Facebook investor - has profoundly reshaped industry after industry and, ultimately, remade the world to fit his radical vision of the future. Unfortunately, despite his impact in industries ranging from digital payments and mass government surveillance to radical life extension and seasteading, the media has done relatively little reporting on the details of his companies, often leaving the public in the dark on his contributions to society.

But maybe you can change that.

With MuckRock’s Thiel Fellowship, we want to help journalists and researchers better understand this pivotal figure’s work and share what they learn with the world.

#USA #disruption #activisme

HP detonates its timebomb : printers stop accepting third party ink en masse / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/09/19/hp-detonates-its-timebomb-pri.html

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On September 13, owners of HP OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro and OfficeJet Pro X began contacting third-party ink vendors by the thousand, reporting that their HP printers no longer accepted third-party ink.

The last HP printer firmware update was pushed in March 2016, and it appears that with that update (or possibly an earlier one), HP had set a time-bomb ticking in its customers’ printers counting down to the date when they’d begin refusing to follow their owners’ orders.

HP says that the March update’s purpose was “to protect HP’s innovations and intellectual property.”

HP printers start rejecting budget ink cartridges - BBC News
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37408173

Large numbers of HP printer owners found their printers stopped recognising unofficial printer ink cartridges on 13 September.

Dutch printer ink vendor 123inkt said it had received more than 1,000 complaints in one day.

HP said that during its last firmware update, settings had been changed so HP printers would communicate with only HP-chipped cartridges.

It also said some devices already had the functionality built-in.

123inkt said it did not believe that a firmware update had been issued since March 2016, suggesting the change had been pre-programmed to roll out this month.

HP said such updates were rolled out “periodically” but did not comment on the timing of the last instalment.

“The purpose of this update is to protect HP’s innovations and intellectual property,” it said in a statement.

It has angered some of its customers as HP branded cartridges are notably more expensive than unofficial brands.
’Cartridge problem’

Reported error messages include “cartridge problem”, “one or more cartridges are missing or damaged” or “older generation cartridge”.

One contributor to HP’s support forum said the firmware had been updated “without my permission” and an error message now said the ink cartridge was damaged.

“I use it daily for work and now am in trouble,” he wrote.

“Others must have the same problem. Is there a way to stop HP from doing this to people who have bought their equipment?”

The HP OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro and OfficeJet Pro X printers are affected.

Chipped cartridges filled with alternative ink would still work, HP told the BBC.

#WTF #monopole

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality | Freakonometrics

►http://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/49175

Chaudement recommandé par notre ami Arthur Charpentier alias @freakonometrics sur seenthis

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Weapons of Maths Destruction est un livre passionnant, qui, comme le sous-titre l’indique parle de bigdata. Beaucoup de livres parus ces jours-ci parlent de big data. Le point de vue est celui de Cathy, ancienne professeur de mathématiques (après ses études à Berkeley, elle a obtenu un doctorat à Harvard et enseigné au MIT lors de son postdoc), qui a travaillé sur les marchés financiers au moment de la crise de 2008 dans un hedge fund, avant de rejoindre RiskMetrics en 2009, comprenant qu’il était important de modéliser les risques financiers. Après avoir côtoyé le mouvement Occupy Wall Street, elle décide reprendre sa vie en main, en devenant Data Scientist. Elle a dirigé un des cursus de l’école de journalisme de Columbia tout en étant consultante en Data Science.

#data #statistiques #mathématiques #inégalités

Five government contractors account for 80% of America’s surveillance workforce / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/09/13/five-government-contractors-ac.html

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All told, the Big 5 (Leidos, Booz, CSRA, SAIC, CACI) account for 80% of that $50B annual pork barrel paycheck for assisting America’s spy agencies. This is an unprecedented level of concentration in the intelligence-industrial complex. This situation has created a seller’s market for intelligence services, where too-big-to-fail contractors operate with impunity in a cash-rich, unsupervised, secret industry, able to call the NSA’s shots.

The Big 5 supply the majority of the spy agencies’ staff, including senior staffers who report directly to agency directors. The total numbers, and the money involved, are both secrets, and can only be estimated through indirect means.

#USA #espionnage

Marty Feldman - Six Degrees of Separation (Documentary) - YouTube
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oChBT5B3Ulg

Dieses Video ist in Deutschland leider nicht verfügbar, da es Musik von UMG enthalten könnte, über deren Verwendung wir uns mit der GEMA bisher nicht einigen konnten.
Das tut uns leid.

Là je peux dire que c’est excellent, on comprend où Rowan Atkínson est allé chercher son inspiration.
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlPAVm8Gl6M

Feldman’s classic sketch where he takes a stray monster he found to the vet

#merci Boingboing ▻http://boingboing.net/2016/09/12/terrific-profile-on-comedian-m.html
#humour

Stranded at sea, British artist sees her surroundings with new eyes | Vancouver Sun
▻http://vancouversun.com/entertainment/local-arts/art-seen-stranded-at-sea-british-artist-sees-her-surroundings-with-new
▻http://wpmedia.vancouversun.com/2016/09/a-british-artist-taking-part-in-a-vancouver-art-gallerys-res.j

The Hanjin Geneva is now somewhere off the coast of Japan near Tokyo. It cannot dock because ports around the world have barred Hanjin ships over concerns that include the payment of port and service fees.

I composed several questions and sent them to Moss via Kimberly Phillips, the curator/director at Access Gallery. Phillips is in touch with Moss by email. Moss’s answers have been edited for context and style.

–—

Artist-in-residence stuck on bankrupt container ship that no port will accept / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/09/07/artist-in-residence-stuck-on-b.html

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British artist Rebecca Moss went aboard the Hanjin Geneva container ship for a “23 Days at Sea Residency.” But the company that owns the ship went bankrupt on August 31, and ports all over the world have barred Hanjin’s ships because the shipping line is unable to pay the port and service fees.

#marrant #art #container #transport_maritime

See it before you go swimming
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/08/19/ominous-music-in-shark-videos.html

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A new study suggests that the ominous background music often heard in shark documentaries correlates with viewers’ fearful and negative opinions of sharks. (For the source of this musical cliche, see the 1975 trailer for Jaws ....)

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1fu_sA7XhE

It is as if God created the devil and gave him jaws.

UC Davis Chancellor spent $400K+ to scrub her online reputation after pepper-spray incident / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/08/17/uc-davis-chancellor-spent-400.html

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Back in April, we learned that UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi had hired a sleazy “reputation-management” company to scrub her reputation and that of the university after the 2011 incident in which university police lieutenant John Pike hosed down peaceful protesters with pepper spray, jetting chemical irritant directly into their open mouths and eyes.

The bill for that “scrubbing” was over $175,000. But turns out that she hired two other companies to try to prevent the taint of scandal from landing on her, spending more than $400K in all on the fruitless exercise.

This isn’t her first terrible adventure in “reputation management.” At her previous job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she forced her aides to edit her Wikipedia entry — over their protests — when it emerged that children of big-ticket donors were given admission preference to the university.

#USA #internet #réputation #wtf

Flood destroys home of man who believes floods sent to punish gays / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/08/18/flood-destroys-home-of-man-who.html
Parfois on se demande si dieu existe ...

Amid the horror of floods that have covered southern Louisiana in recent days, a grim note of irony: Tony Perkins, the head of the anti-queer Family Research Council, is among those whose homes are underwater. Perkins believes natural disasters are sent to punish gays.

This week the Lord Almighty aimed his Holy Wrath at Louisiana, where among the thousands of people made homeless by flooding is hate group leader Tony Perkins, who reports that he had to escape his destroyed home by canoe. Perkins is on vacation this month, but today he called into his own radio show to lament the “biblical proportion” disaster that will allegedly force his family to live in a camper for the six months it will take to rebuild his home. Today’s guest host for Perkins’ show is former Family Research Council vice president Ken Klukowski, who now works for Breitbart.

This particular flood, he said, was not to punish gays. This one is a “an incredible, encouraging spiritual exercise.”

At least 13 are so far dead.

Comme disait Charlie c’est dur d’être aimé ...
#LGBT

Predictive policing predicts police harassment, not crime / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/08/18/predictive-policing-predicts-p.html

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In Chicago, the “Heat List” system is used to direct policing resources, based on data-mining of social media to identify potential gang-members; the model tells the cops where to go and who to arrest, and is supposed to reduce both violent crime and the likelihood that suspects themselves will be killed — but peer-reviewed analysis (Scihub mirror) of the program shows that while being on the Heat List increases your chances of being harassed and arrested by Chicago PD, it does not improve crime rates.