Excuse me a moment while I headdesk? Washington Post: Elite CIA unit that developed hacking tools failed to secure its own systems, allowing massive leak, an internal report found. “The theft of top-secret computer hacking tools from the CIA in 2016 was the result of a workplace culture in which the agency’s elite computer hackers ‘prioritized building cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems,’ according to an internal report prepared for then-director Mike Pompeo as well as his deputy, Gina Haspel, now the current director.”
stupidness
Yahoo News: Facebook deems baker’s pie ‘too sexy’ for social media
Yahoo News: Facebook deems baker’s pie ‘too sexy’ for social media. “Wellington baker Niels Reinsborg started his business, Crafty Pies, to supply the baked treat to cafes, but when the coronavirus hit New Zealand shortly after he opened, he had to get creative and began offering his pies for sale on Facebook with contact-free delivery to homes. Business was booming and he was selling hundreds of pies each week until he posted an image of the Cypriot Shepherd’s Pie, filled with lean lamb cooked with fresh ginger, cumin and cinnamon…. The description and image was apparently flagged and deemed inappropriate. He received a Facebook message explaining the platform could not be used to sell ‘adult’ items, and his account was closed.”
Coronavirus: Belgian Prince Joachim tests positive after lockdown party (BBC)
BBC: Coronavirus: Belgian Prince Joachim tests positive after lockdown party. “Prince Joachim, 28, travelled from Belgium to Spain for an internship on 26 May, the palace said. Two days later, he went to a party in the southern city of Córdoba, before testing positive for Covid-19. Spanish reports suggest the prince, a nephew of Belgium’s King Philippe, was among 27 people at the party. Under Córdoba’s lockdown rules, a party of this size would be a breach of regulations, as gatherings of no more than 15 people are currently permitted.”
TorrentFreak: YouTuber Who Slammed Copyright Lawsuit Against Katy Perry Hit With Copyright Complaint From Perry’s Publisher
TorrentFreak: YouTuber Who Slammed Copyright Lawsuit Against Katy Perry Hit With Copyright Complaint From Perry’s Publisher. “Katy Perry’s writers lost a $2.8m lawsuit against Christian rapper Flame last year over the use of a handful of notes. Musician Adam Neely published a hit video on YouTube slamming the lawsuit but in a bizarre twist, Perry’s publisher Warner Chappell has now filed an infringement complaint against Neely. Not only have they claimed all of the advertising revenue from his video, they’ve turned the entire matter into an unbelievable trainwreck.”
Update: USCIS comment period extended to February 10 (California Genealogical Society)
California Genealogical Society: Update: USCIS comment period extended to February 10. “You may have heard that U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) is proposing to exponentially increase fees for retrieval of their genealogy records. In some cases this would mean raising costs as much as 500 percent. We wrote about this previously in our blog. USCIS is the repository for most immigration and naturalization records from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. The proposal has drawn protests from historians and genealogists and even from some Congressional members, most notably Senator Mitt Romney.”
Speak Out Against Exorbitant Fees: Deadline is December 16 (California Ancestors Blog)
California Ancestors Blog: Speak Out Against Exorbitant Fees: Deadline is December 16. “The genealogy world is abuzz with news that U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) has proposed a sharp increase in fees for searches and copies of genealogical and historical records, beginning in 2020…. The records include naturalization certificates, alien registration forms, visa and registry files, and alien files (A-Files), all invaluable resources for researchers. The bureau already charges a nonrefundable $65 fee per search. It proposes to raise that search fee to an exorbitant $240—an increase of 269 percent.”
New York Times: Cruise Line Bars Woman Who Climbed on Balcony Railing for Selfie
New York Times: Cruise Line Bars Woman Who Climbed on Balcony Railing for Selfie. “A photograph taken this week on a Caribbean cruise ship quickly gained widespread attention but it wasn’t of a pink-sand beach, a zip-lining adventure or an onboard skydiving simulator. It was of a woman standing on a balcony railing of her stateroom on one of the world’s largest cruise ships — posing for a selfie.”
Betches: A Company Shamed An Applicant For Her IG Pic & It’s Backfiring Spectacularly
Betches: A Company Shamed An Applicant For Her IG Pic & It’s Backfiring Spectacularly. “Yesterday started out just like any other mediocre American Tuesday. Birds were singing, politicians were tweeting, and millennials around the country were trying to find jobs that would help them pay off their thousands of dollars in student loan debt while simultaneously not making them want to die (aka: the dream).”
Boing Boing: Announcement of Tumblr’s sale to WordPress classified as pornography by Tumblr’s notorious “adult content” filter
Boing Boing: Announcement of Tumblr’s sale to WordPress classified as pornography by Tumblr’s notorious “adult content” filter. “The filter is a piece of unadulterated, unsalvageable garbage. Its awfulness is hard to overstate, but it can be neatly illustrated by this Bruce Sterling post, which reveals that the Tumblr porn filter blocked Sterling’s post of a screenshot of a news story about the acquisition, which includes the happy coda, ‘This decision cannot be appealed.'”
VentureBeat: E3 organization leaks data for over 2,000 journalists and analysts
VentureBeat: E3 organization leaks data for over 2,000 journalists and analysts. “This failure to adequately secure sensitive data doesn’t just expose games journalists. I’ve confirmed with someone who has access to the list (with the ESA’s permission) that it contains info for YouTube creators, Wall Street financial analysts at firms like Wedbush and Goldman Sachs, and Tencent employees.”
Boing Boing: Sony’s copyright bots remove a band’s own release of its new video
Boing Boing: Sony’s copyright bots remove a band’s own release of its new video. “The Sheffield-based experimental music act 65daysofstatic has a new album coming out in September, called ‘Replicr, 2019.’ Today, the band began its launch publicity by releasing a video from the album, only to have the video blocked on multiple services by copyright bots working on behalf of Sony, which distributed the band’s label, Superball.”
New York Times: Accused of ‘Terrorism’ for Putting Legal Materials Online
New York Times: Accused of ‘Terrorism’ for Putting Legal Materials Online. “Carl Malamud believes in open access to government records, and he has spent more than a decade putting them online. You might think states would welcome the help. But when Mr. Malamud’s group posted the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, the state sued for copyright infringement. Providing public access to the state’s laws and related legal materials, Georgia’s lawyers said, was part of a ‘strategy of terrorism.'”
Boing Boing: Jimmy Fallon played a video game on air, meaning that streaming your own game gets you taken down as a pirate, thanks to NBC
Boing Boing: Jimmy Fallon played a video game on air, meaning that streaming your own game gets you taken down as a pirate, thanks to NBC. “NBC (and the other broadcasters) provides copies of its shows to Youtube’s Content ID filter, which is supposed to protect copyright by blocking uploads of videos that match ones in its database of claimed videos. That means that if you own the copyright to something that is aired on NBC, any subsequent attempts by you or your fans to upload your work will be blocked as copyright infringements, and could cost you your Youtube account. The latest casualty of this is the video game Beat Saber.”
BBC: Facebook copied email contacts of 1.5 million users
BBC: Facebook copied email contacts of 1.5 million users. “Facebook ‘unintentionally’ uploaded the email contacts of more than 1.5 million users without asking permission to do so, the social network has admitted. The data harvesting happened via a system used to verify the identity of new members, Facebook asked new users to supply the password for their email account, and took a copy of their contacts.”
Ars Technica: Twitter blocks EFF tweet that criticized bogus takedown of a previous tweet
Ars Technica: Twitter blocks EFF tweet that criticized bogus takedown of a previous tweet. “Twitter and Starz have given us a new example of how copyright enforcement can easily go overboard. At Starz’s request, Twitter blocked an April 8 tweet by the news site TorrentFreak, which had posted a link to one of its news articles about piracy.” The tweets have been restored, but this is not a good look.
