Dev.SN

Fluffeh writes:

Media distributor VODO recently packaged up a few items into an Otherworlds bundle and popped it up for sale. One of the places they advertised was The Pirate Bay, with the folks there being generous enough to replace their site banner with the link. There were several payment options (beat the average, pay what you want, be generous) and the bundle was advertised through a number of other sites as well as social media.

Interestingly, Pirate Bay users mostly picked the latter option. In total, 232 Pirate Bay visitors chose the most expensive "beat the premium" option, paying $18.11 on average. Another 72 visitors went for the cheapest option with an average payment of $10.61, and 67 people ended up in the middle with an $10.61 average.

Across all paying Pirate Bay visitors the average payment was $13.52. Interestingly enough, this is more than the average paid by people who came from other sites, or social media.

That said, TPB users weren't clicking through as heavily:

King notes that the ratio of incoming visitors to buying visitors was relatively low, about a tenth of that from other sites.

However, per user, they paid the most among all buyers.

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Original Submission

BBC reports:

The remains of a man who died in a hot spring accident in Yellowstone National Park were dissolved before they could be recovered. [...]According to the incident report, Mr Scott and his sister, Sable Scott, left the defined boardwalk area in Norris Basin on 7 June.

The pair had been specifically looking for an area to soak in the thermal springs, despite the potential danger and warning signs. [...]Rescue teams later found his body in the pool but abandoned attempts to retrieve it due to the decreasing light available, the danger to themselves and an approaching lightning storm. [...]The following day, workers were unable to find any significant remains in the boiling water.

Yahoo News noted:

The official report states that the victim's sister told investigators that Colin Scott had reached down to test the water temperature of a thermal feature when he slipped, falling into the super-heated, acidic water. When first responders arrived back at the scene, they found the victim's body and personal effects in the hot spring, but were unable to proceed with their recovery efforts due to inclement weather.

When a recovery team came back the next day, all traces of the victim's remains were gone, presumably dissolved in the hot, churning, acidic water of the Yellowstone thermal feature.

MrPlow passes on this IRC submission from TheMightyBuzzard:

If you're a consumer, that piece of digital wordsmithery you purchased probably isn't worth the paper it isn't printed on. Like most digital media available for "purchase," ebooks are often "sold" as licenses that allow the publisher to control use of the product indefinitely, whether through DRM or by simply attaching EULAs no one will ever read to every download.

This works out great for publishers, who can make irrational, unilateral decisions to pull their catalogs from platforms as a "bargaining tool," leaving purchasers without access to their purchased goods. But publishers (including music publishers like UMG) only use the term "license" when it's most advantageous for them. When it comes to paying authors, the terminology suddenly changes. Now it's a "sale," with all the disadvantages for authors that entails.

"Sales" is a historical term, meant to reference physical sales and the additional costs (printing, packaging, shipping) built into the process. Licenses -- and the ebooks attached to them -- have none of these costs, hence the higher payout rate. But, according to a recently-filed lawsuit, Simon and Schuster is treating ebooks like physical sales in order to pay authors lower royalties.

The fine article digs deeper into the precedents and the pertinent wording in the various agreements for those who want to get their teeth into the details. Case-by-case lawsuits don't appear to be a particularly satisfying solution to what appears to be endemic in the industry. Is a solution instead for the content creators to stick their middle finger up at the traditional publishers, and find other ways of getting their creations into the market? Insight from content creators is most welcome.

Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160522/14454734518/author-sues-publisher-portraying-ebook-licenses-as-sales-to-pay-out-fewer-royalties.shtml

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Original Submission

lhsi writes:

Marketing data for a pregnant woman is particularly sought after by advertisers. In an attempt to avoid data-collection, Janet Vertesi, assistant professor of sociology at Princeton University, tried to hide her pregnancy from the internet. She ensured there was no mention on social media, used Tor to browse baby related websites, and used cash or gift cards when buying baby related items.

Vertesi presented on big data at the Theorizing the Web conference in Brooklyn on Friday, where she discussed how she hid her pregnancy, the challenges she faced and how the experience sheds light on the overall political and social implications of data-collecting bots and cookies.
"My story is about big data, but from the bottom up," she said. "From a very personal perspective of what it takes to avoid being collected, being tracked and being placed into databases."

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Original Submission

exec writes:

Computerworld is currently carrying an article on Atari's latest foray into the tech marketplace - expanding the internet of things over the SigFox network:

The latest entrant in the Internet of Things is legendary gaming company Atari, which plans to make consumer devices that communicate over the SigFox low-power network.

The devices will be for homes, pets, lifestyle and safety. Over the SigFox network, users will be able to see the location and status of their devices at all times, the companies said. They’re set to go into production this year.

[...] One advantage of SigFox is that it doesn't force consumers to set up cellular service or pair their devices with something nearby. Each hardware product will connect itself to the network as soon as the batteries go in, the companies said.

This seems to be a deviation from the previous direction Atari claimed to be heading in.

The story's rather light on listing the actual features and capabilities of these devices - will they just be privacy-invading snooping devices by design? Or will they simply be so insecure that they accidentally turn into such devices?

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Original Submission

MSE Bug Crashes Windows XP

danomac writes:

Apparently a bug in a Microsoft Security Essentials update caused XP computers to bluescreen. After rebooting once updates were installed the XP machines would bluescreen with "MsMpEng.exe application error".

Microsoft has fixed the error by releasing a definitions update for Security Essentials. Whoops!

Microsoft warns of Internet Explorer flaw

crutchy writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27184188

"The flaw affects Internet Explorer (IE) versions 6 to 11 and Microsoft said it was aware of "limited, targeted attacks" to exploit it."

"the issue may be of special concern to people still using the Windows XP operating system"

"This will be the first zero day vulnerability that will not be patched for Windows XP users,"

--from the windows-8-marketing dept

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paulej72 writes:

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Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

The Register has a run-down of some notable -- and expensive -- errors made by Steve Ballmer while he was the CEO of Microsoft.

But this [the acquisition of Nokia] wasn't the first time one of Ballmer's plans cost Microsoft some serious coin. In fact, on several occasions during his tenure he bet big on the wrong idea when he probably should have known better, ultimately costing the company millions or even billions in the process.

While it's true that Ballmer's 14 years in the corner office left Microsoft a more profitable and more valuable company than when he first became chief exec, his legacy also includes a series of bad gambles that didn't pay off. Here we remember a few of the biggest ones – and time will tell whether Nadella can avoid similar mistakes.

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Original Submission

"The Mighty Buzzard" writes:

blah blah blah

crutchy is awesome

fruit noodley noot[sic]

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Original Submission

While public consultation about bill C-51 is still ongoing in Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is requesting new power to enable the interception and decryption of electronic conversations.

Suspected child predators, drug traffickers and extremists allegedly planning attacks or to join ISIS are escaping the eyes of the law because of increasingly impenetrable encryption and other digital roadblocks, according to top secret RCMP files reviewed by a CBC News/Toronto Star investigation.

The article also refers to an episode where the RCMP spent a considerable amount of money to install equipment to tap into a person of interest's conversations, only to notice that the communications could not be decrypted.

In late 2014, the Mounties spent two months and $250,000 to engineer a custom tool to intercept the target's communications only to discover all of it was encrypted and unreadable.