August 2019 – Page 56 – news.buyenne.com

Zoncolan: Facebook testet 100 Millionen Zeilen Code in 30 Minuten

Das Entwicklerteam von Facebook hat ein eigenes Werkzeug zur statischen Code-Analyse erstellt und stellt nun erstmals Details dazu vor. Das Projekt habe Tausende Sicherheitslücken verhindert. (Facebook, Sicherheitslücke)

US-Sanktionen: Huawei soll weitere 90 Tage Aufschub bekommen

Der chinesische IT-Konzern Huawei bekommt wohl einen weiteren kurzfristigen Aufschub der US-Sanktionen, um weiter bei Zulieferern einkaufen zu können. Damit sollen Kunden von Huawei bedient werden können. (Huawei, Telekommunikation)

IT-Arbeit: Was fürs Auge

Notebook, Display und Smartphone sind für alle, die in der IT arbeiten, wichtige Werkzeuge. Damit man etwas mit ihnen anfangen kann, ist ein anderes Werkzeug mindestens genauso wichtig: die Augen. Wir geben Tipps, wie man auch als Freiberufler augensch…

Anti-Piracy Efforts Are Unlikely to Beat Sci-Hub

Elsevier and other academic publishers see ‘pirate’ site Sci-Hub as a major threat to their billion-dollar industries. Many researchers, however, can’t function properly without the notorious site. Since anti-piracy efforts are unlikely to beat the site, perhaps it’s time for the publishers to draw a lesson from Sci-Hub instead?

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Sci-Hub has often been referred to as “The Pirate Bay of Science,” but that description really sells the site short.

While both sites are helping the public to access copyrighted content without permission, Sci-Hub has also become a crucial tool that arguably helps the progress of science.

The site allows researchers to bypass expensive paywalls so they can read articles written by their fellow colleagues. The information in these ‘pirated’ articles is then used to provide the foundation for future research.

What the site does is not permitted, according to the law, but in the academic world, Sci-Hub is praised by many. In particular, those who don’t have direct access to expensive journals but aspire to excel in their academic field.

This leads to a rather intriguing situation where many of the ‘creators,’ the people who write academic articles, are openly supporting the site. By doing so, they go directly against the major publishers, including the billion-dollar company Elsevier, which are the rightsholders.

Elsevier previously convinced the courts that Sci-Hub is a force of evil. Many scientists, however, see it as an extremely useful tool. This was illustrated once again by a ‘letter to the editor’ Dr. Prasanna R Deshpande sent to the Journal of Health & Allied Sciences recently.

While Deshpande works at the Department of Clinical Pharmacy at Poona College of Pharmacy, his latest writing is entirely dedicated to copyright and Sci-Hub. In his published letter (no paywall), the researcher explains why a site such as Sci-Hub is important for the scientific community as a whole.

The Indian researcher points out that Sci-Hub’s main advantage is that it’s free of charge. This is particularly important for academics in developing countries, who otherwise don’t have the means to access crucial articles. Sci-Hub actually allows these people to carry out better research.

“A researcher generally has to pay some money ($30 or more per article on an average) for accessing the scholarly articles. However, the amount may not be ‘small’ for a researcher/research scholar, especially from a developing country,” Deshpande notes.

Aside from the cost issue, Sci-hub is often seen as more convenient as well. Many professors use the site and a recent survey found that it’s used to conduct research by 62.5% of all medical students across six countries in Latin America.

According to Deshpande, these and other arguments lead to the conclusion that Sci-Hub should be supported, at least until there is a good alternative.

“Reading updated knowledge is one of the essential parts of lifelong learning. Currently, Sci‑Hub is the only answer for this. Therefore, Sci‑Hub has various advantages because of which it should be supported,”
Deshpande concludes.

This is of course just the opinion of one researcher, but the web is riddled with similar examples. A simple Twitter search shows that many academics are sharing Sci-Hub links among each other, and some have even created dedicated websites to show some of the latest working Sci-Hub mirrors.

The major publishers are obviously not happy with this. Aside from lawsuits against Sci-Hub, they regularly send takedown notices to sites that link to infringing articles, including Google.

Recently Elsevier took it a step further by going after Citationsy, a tool that allows academics and researchers to manage citations and reference lists. The service previously published a blog post summing up some options for people to download free research articles.

This blog post also linked to Sci-Hub. Elsevier clearly didn’t like this, and sent its lawyer after Citationsy, requesting it to remove the link.

Citantionsy founder Cenk Özbakır initially wasn’t sure how to respond. Linking to a website isn’t necessarily copyright infringement. However, challenging a multi-billion dollar company on an issue like this is a battle that’s hard to win.

Eventually, Özbakır decided to remove it, pointing to a Google search instead. However, not without being rather critical of the move by Elsevier and its law firm Bird & Bird.

“I have of course taken down any links to Sci-Hub on Citationsy.com. @ElsevierLabs obviously thinks making money is more important than furthering science. Congratulations, @twobirds! We all now that the only thing this will achieve is less people reading papers,” Özbakır wrote on Twitter.

The ‘linking’ issue was later picked up by BoingBoing which also pointed out that many of Elsevier’s own publications include links to Sci-Hub, as we also highlighted in the past.

While not all researchers are unanimously backing Sci-Hub, it appears that this type of enforcement may not be the best way forward.

Pressuring people with cease and desist notices, filing lawsuits, and sending takedown notices certainly isn’t sustainable in the long term, especially if they target people in the academic community.

Perhaps Elsevier and other publishers should use the massive popularity of Sci-Hub as a signal that something is clearly wrong with what they are offering. Instead of trying to hide piracy by sweeping it under the rug, Elsevier could learn from it and adapt.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Report: United States will give Huawei another 90-day export license

US and Chinese governments are expected to talk things out this weekend.

A man speaks on a smartphone outside a Huawei storefront.

Update Monday, August 19, 2:15pm: As expected, the US Department of Commerce made the extension official today. Effective today, Huawei has another 90-day Temporary General License that will allow it to support its existing customers until November 18, 2019.

The press release includes a statement from Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, saying, "As we continue to urge consumers to transition away from Huawei's products, we recognize that more time is necessary to prevent any disruption. Simultaneously, we are constantly working at the Department to ensure that any exports to Huawei and its affiliates do not violate the terms of the Entity Listing or Temporary General License."

In addition to the 90-day extension, the Department of Commerce expanded the scope of the export ban and added 46 additional Huawei affiliates to the entity list.

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Man Tried to Burn Down Telecoms Watchdog to Avenge Pirate Site-Blocking

A man in Russia who admitted to attempting three arson attacks says he took action in response to the authorities blocking pirate sites. The prosecutor demanded two years in prison but the man, who tried to burn down the offices of telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor, has now received 18 months probation.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

While copyright holders and many governments see site-blocking as a reasoned and measured response to copyright infringement, some people view it as overkill.

People should be able to access whatever content they want without rich corporations deciding what should and should not appear on computer screens, the argument goes.

For former student Pavel Kopylov, blocking of pirate sites in Russia has gone too far. So, to make his displeasure obvious to Roscomnadzor, the government entity responsible for carrying it out, last year he attempted to burn one of its offices down – three times.

On April 2, 2018, reportedly dissatisfied that his favorite torrent tracker had been blocked, Kopylov went to the local offices of Roscomnadzor,
smashed a window, and threw a bottle of flammable liquid inside together with a burning match. The attempt was a failure – the fire didn’t ignite and a guard was alerted by the noise.

Almost two weeks later, Kopylov returned for a second try. This time a fire did ensue but it was put out, without causing catastrophic damage. A third attempt, on May 9, 2018, ended in complete failure, with a guard catching the would-be arsonist before he could carry out his plan.

Nevertheless, the prosecutor’s office saw the attacks as an attempt to destroy Roscomnadzor’s property by arson, an offense carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison. The prosecution sought two years but in the end, had to settle for considerably less.

Interfax reports that a court in the Ulyanovsk region has now sentenced the man for repeatedly trying to burn down Roscomnadzor’s regional office. He received 18 months probation but the prosecution intends to appeal, describing the sentence as excessively lenient.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

New Attack exploiting serious Bluetooth weakness can intercept sensitive data

“KNOB” forces devices to use encryption keys that are trivial to break.

Researchers have demonstrated a serious weakness in the Bluetooth wireless standard that could allow hackers to intercept keystrokes, address books, and other sensitive data sent from billions of devices.

Dubbed Key Negotiation of Bluetooth—or KNOB for short—the attack forces two or more devices to choose an encryption key just a single byte in length before establishing a Bluetooth connection. Attackers within radio range can then use commodity hardware to quickly crack the key. From there, attackers can use the cracked key to decrypt data passing between the devices. The types of data susceptible could include keystrokes passing between a wireless keyboard and computer, address books uploaded from a phone to a car dashboard, or photographs exchanged between phones.

KNOB doesn’t require an attacker to have any previously shared secret material or to observe the pairing process of the targeted devices. The exploit is invisible to Bluetooth apps and the operating system they run on, making the attack almost impossible to detect without highly specialized equipment. KNOB also exploits a weakness in the Bluetooth standard itself, making it likely the vulnerability affects just about every device that’s compliant with the specification. The researchers have simulated the attack on 14 different Bluetooth chips—including those from Broadcom, Apple, and Qualcomm—and found all of them to be vulnerable.

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Wind power prices now lower than the cost of natural gas

In the US, it’s cheaper to build and operate wind farms than buy fossil fuels.

This week, the US Department of Energy released a report that looks back on the state of wind power in the US by running the numbers on 2018. The analysis shows that wind hardware prices are dropping, even as new turbine designs are increasing the typical power generated by each turbine. As a result, recent wind farms have gotten so cheap that you can build and operate them for less than the expected cost of buying fuel for an equivalent natural gas plant.

Wind is even cheaper at the moment because of a tax credit given to renewable energy generation. But that credit is in the process of fading out, leading to long term uncertainty in a power market where demand is generally stable or dropping.

A lot of GigaWatts

2018 saw about 7.6 GigaWatts of new wind capacity added to the grid, accounting for just over 20 percent of the US' capacity additions. This puts it in third place behind natural gas and solar power. That's less impressive than it might sound, however, given that things like coal and nuclear are essentially at a standstill. Because the best winds aren't evenly distributed in the US, there are areas, like parts of the Great Plains, where wind installations were more than half of the new power capacity installed.

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Verfassungsschutz: Einbruch für den Staatstrojaner

Der Verfassungsschutz soll künftig auch Computer und Smartphones von Verdächtigen durchsuchen dürfen. Um Staatstrojaner zu installieren, sollen Wohnungseinbrüche erlaubt sein. (BND, Datenschutz)

Be emobil: Berliner Ladesäulen auf Verbrauchsabrechnung umgestellt

Der Ladenetzbetreiber Allego hat die Abrechnung der öffentlichen Ladestationen in Berlin umgestellt. Statt eines Pauschalpreises für den Ladevorgang zahlen Elektroautomobilisten in Zukunft nach geladener Strommenge. (Elektroauto, RFID)