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New rules that affect open source firmware on Wi-Fi routers will be implemented on June 2, but not all network hardware will prevent the loading of third-party software.

Linksys has been collaborating with chipmaker Marvell and the makers of OpenWrt to make sure its latest WRT routers can comply with the new rules without blocking open source firmware, company officials told Ars.

Linksys’s effort stands in contrast with TP-Link, which said it would entirely prevent loading of open source firmware on its routers to satisfy the new Federal Communications Commission requirements.

Blocking third-party firmware is the easiest way to comply with the FCC rules, which aim to limit interference with other devices by preventing user modifications that cause radios to operate outside their licensed RF (radio frequency) parameters.

The FCC wrote its rules in response to interference with FAA Doppler weather radar systems. Routers using certain portions of the 5GHz band were already required to use dynamic frequency selection (DFS) in order to detect nearby radar systems and avoid operating on the same channel. But it’s possible for users to disable dynamic frequency selection—the FCC has called this a “major cause of harmful interference.” Most cases of interference have been caused either by disabling DFS or “devices that have been modified to operate in frequency bands in which they are not certified to operate,” the FCC says.

“Our responsibility to the open source community”

Any 5GHz routers sold on or after June 2 must include security measures that prevent these types of changes. But router makers can still allow loading of open source firmware as long as they also deploy controls that prevent devices from operating outside their allowed frequencies, types of modulation, power levels, and so on.

This takes more work than simply locking out third-party firmware entirely, but Linksys, a division of Belkin, made the extra effort. On and after June 2, newly sold Linksys WRT routers will store RF parameter data in a separate memory location in order to secure it from the firmware, the company says. That will allow users to keep loading open source firmware the same way they do now.

Other Linksys routers, such as Max-Stream devices, will block open source firmware. But continuing support on the WRT line is a natural move for Linksys, given that the OpenWrt and DD-WRT third-party firmware was originally built for the company’s WRT54G routers more than a decade ago.

“They're named WRT… it's almost our responsibility to the open source community,” Linksys router product manager Vince La Duca told Ars.

WRT stands for “Wireless RouTer,” and Linksys has stuck with its naming conventions and support for open source for many years. The “WRT54GL” released in 2005 offered speeds of up to 54Mbps. The “L” stood for Linux.

Linksys resurrected the classic blue and black design of the WRT in 2014 with the new WRT1900AC. The numbers and letters indicated support for up to 1900Mbps and the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. That router as well as the newer WRT1900ACS and WRT1200AC will continue to support open source firmware after the new rules take effect, La Duca said.

"The hardware design of the WRT platform allows us to isolate the RF parameter data and secure it outside of the host firmware separately," Linksys said in a written statement given to Ars.

La Duca declined to get more specific about Linksys's exact method. Even though this is about enabling open source, Linksys’s method is proprietary and provides a competitive advantage over other router makers that aren’t supporting open source, La Duca said.

Using open source isn't about breaking the rules

While Linksys’s support of open source is partly a marketing strategy, La Duca understands why customers want to use OpenWrt and similar software.

“The real benefit of open source is not breaking the rules and doing something with malicious intent, the value of open source is being able to customize your router, to be able to do privacy browsing through Tor, being able to build an OpenVPN client, being able to strip down the firmware to do super lean, low-latency gaming,” La Duca said. “It's not about ‘I'm going to go get OpenWrt to go and piss off the FCC.' It's about what you can do in expanding the capabilities of what we ship with.”

But that doesn’t extend across all Linksys routers. For Max-Stream devices and other routers that lack WRT branding, “open source is not a value proposition that we are promoting,” La Duca said. For those non-WRT platforms, Linksys is not working with chip providers to enable open source support.

"All Linksys legacy and Max-Stream routers will have the full host firmware locked down," the Linksys statement said. The company noted that these routers were never marketed to open source users as the WRT routers are.

Whether open or closed, Linksys said all of its dual- and tri-band routers will comply with the new FCC rules "that require our routers and software to be secured to prevent changing the power output or unauthorized channel selection of the router on the 5Ghz band." (There are also similar new requirements implemented by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Linksys said.)

“No one else was prepared for this”

Imre Kaloz, a key OpenWrt developer, told Ars that he isn't aware of any other vendors making a similar effort to support open source. Kaloz has tried to get other hardware makers interested, but he said his attempts have so far only earned him some marketing e-mails.

Still, Kaloz holds out hope that other vendors will see the work Linksys has done and try to copy it. “It's not that complicated, it's simply that no one else was prepared for this,” Kaloz said.

Most of the necessary changes happened on the hardware side, Kaloz said. But OpenWrt developers also worked closely with Marvell to update the open source wireless driver so that OpenWrt can continue to work, he said.

Default OpenWrt functionality will remain unchanged on Linksys WRT routers, Kaloz said. It’s open source and can thus be modified, but by default OpenWrt doesn’t let users do anything that would violate FCC rules, he said.

DD-WRT, which is based on OpenWrt, is capable of disabling DFS.

Although Linksys has proven that open source firmware can still be used under the new FCC rules, it’s clear that options for open source users will be more limited than they are today. Kaloz wishes the FCC had taken a different approach, one focused on punishing people who cause interference without preventing legitimate uses of network hardware.

The decisions, he said, "have been made by lawyers who had not too much technical knowledge."

Der Dokumentarfilm Traceroute, der heute in Deutschland anläuft, ist mehr als eine Geek-Pilgerreise durch die USA. Regisseur Johannes Grenzfurthner zeichnet ein Nerd-Selbstporträt ohne Scheu, die Hosen herunterzulassen. (Filmkritik, Internet)

Eine Anlaufstelle für Patente unter einer freien Lizenz hat die US-Raumfahrtbehörde Nasa eingerichtet. Dort sind alle Patente, die von jedermann genutzt werden können, abrufbar - inklusive knapp 60 frisch befreiter. (Nasa, Technologie)

Alle Siemens-Beschäftigten mit Firmenhandy werden von dem Konzern gefragt, ob sie auf den Festnetzzugang verzichten wollen. Sie können über eine Maske im Intranet von Siemens auswählen, ob sie noch einen Festnetzanschluss benötigen. (Siemens, Smartphone)

In The Lobster, a bleak comedy set in a future Ireland, the world is being run by what can only be described as an authoritarian dating service. Anyone who is single for more than 45 days is turned into an animal. To help the good citizens of the world remain human, there are terrifying “hotels” where singles go to be reeducated, their arms bound and movements restricted, as they learn why it’s wrong to be alone—and are given the opportunity to meet eligible mates. Despite its fantastical premise, The Lobster nails the often dark emotional reality of dating life in our world.

Colin Farrell plays David, a sad, awkward man whose wife has just left him. Radiating discomfort and kind of blank desperation, he arrives at the hotel with a fluffy dog who turns out to be his brother. The hotel owner recites the rules to him—masturbation is forbidden, and residents can earn extra days of singlehood if they manage to shoot runaways who have fled into the forest. She also requires him to choose which animal he’ll become. Looking uneasily at his brother/dog, David says he’d like to be a lobster “because they have blue blood” and live for a very long time. Somehow, this sums up everything about David—weird and bug-eyed, but with skin made of armor and very sharp claws.

As he undergoes anti-singles conditioning and endures terrible dance parties, David forms shaky friendships with two of his fellow inmates/romance-seekers, the confused and angry John C. Reilly and tragic widower Ben Whishaw. The acting here is superbly understated, with everyone walking a razor’s edge between pathos and comedy.

Released last year in the UK, The Lobster became a critical hit and is finally making its way to the States this weekend. It's the first English-language offering from Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos, who is known for his reality-bending movies Dogtooth and Alps, about troubled human relationships.

One of the clever tropes of The Lobster is that everyone seems to believe that people are “suited” for each other if they have the same ailments. David is near-sighted, so he has to find someone with glasses or contacts. Whishaw falls for a girl who gets nosebleeds. so he smashes his face until he gets nosebleeds too. This arbitrary notion of what makes two people a good fit is uncomfortably familiar for anyone who has ticked boxes on an online dating profile, hoping to find the perfect match in a database populated by random attributes like “body type” and “favorite music.”

David’s efforts to hook up are bumbling and funny at first, but eventually land him in a situation that is so horrific he has no choice but to risk death to flee the hotel. In the forest, surrounded by an odd range of animals we presume are all former singles, he meets a group of subversives called the Loners. Led by an angry pro-singles activist (a seriously scary Léa Seydoux), the group swears off all forms of physical affection and plans sneak attacks on couples. In one memorable scene, they go on a mission to break up couples, holding them at gunpoint in their homes and forcing them to question their love for one another.

Among the Loners is Rachel Weisz, who is terrific as the unnamed woman whose social awkwardness and prickly savagery match David’s own. The two are immediately drawn to each other, sneaking away from the Loners to make out—and make plans for a shaky, seemingly impossible future. Can they really have a genuine romance in a world where the government mandates love and subversives try to smash it? Is it even possible for people to form an authentic emotional connection when they’re under such tremendous social pressure? Like all the questions raised by this flick, these are things we should be asking ourselves, about our own lives. Though it starts out as satire, The Lobster eventually punches you in the gut so hard that you’ll be freaked out for a long time afterwards.

So kurz waren die Prüfzeiträume bei Apple für neue Apps und Udpates im App Store schon lange nicht mehr: Aktuell müssen Entwickler nur noch weniger als zwei Tage warten, bis ihre Software zugelassen wird. Hintergrund könnten erhoffte Mehreinnahmen sein. (Apple, iOS)

Eine Bank setzte zur Überprüfung von Transaktionen offenbar keine Hashwerte der einzelnen Vorgänge ein - sondern nimmt eine Sichtprüfung von PDFs vor. So konnten Angreifer ihre gefälschten Transaktionen verstecken. (Malware, Virus)

Die Telekom setzt in einer kleinen Gemeinde an der Mosel auf Holzmasten, um das Glasfaserkabel in den Ort zu bringen. Doch die Telekom baut kein FTTH, es wird ab Oktober in dem Ort eine Versorgung mit nur 100 MBit/s geben. (Glasfaser, Telekom)

Without a doubt, the bubonic plague has been one of the deadliest and most devastating infectious diseases in all of human history. The bacterial infection—caused by Yersinia pestis—has sparked dozens of outbreaks and three massive pandemics, killing hundreds of millions of people. The Justinian Plague from 541 to 767 is estimated to have killed up to 50 percent of the population at the time and spurred the demise of the Roman Empire. Likewise, the fourteenth century Black Death, which circumnavigated Europe in just a few years, ended up slaughtering as much as 60 percent of the continent’s population.

Yet, despite the indelible mark the dark disease has left on humanity, researchers still aren’t certain how exactly Yersinia sweeps through cities and countries. The highly infectious disease has historically been linked to rodents, in which the bacteria can fester, and rat fleas, which take in and then vomit out the bacteria in subsequent bites. Thus, booming vermin populations have long been assumed to spark and sustain outbreaks. But a fresh analysis of a tiny village in England—made famous for its handling of a plague outbreak from 1665 to 1666—stands to challenge the view.

The Derbyshire village of Eyam, estimated to have a population of around 700 at the time of the outbreak, took the remarkable step of imposing a quarantine on itself—a move almost unheard of at the time. While the villagers aimed to spare neighboring parishes—which they did—the quarantine and the villagers’ detailed death records also provided a perfect opportunity for studying plague transmission dynamics.

In a new analysis of the outbreak, researchers estimate that rodent-to-human transmission accounted for only a quarter of all infections, while human-to-human transmission made up the rest. The finding, published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, adds fuel to a hot debate among academics about how plague spreads. And, more importantly, it has the potential to inform public health responses to modern-day plague outbreaks, which still occur around the world, particularly in Africa and South America (albeit on much smaller scales than historical outbreaks).

“This debate is not just of historical importance but also of contemporary relevance to help deal with this neglected tropical disease, which could someday become a worldwide public health priority again,” the study authors, Lilith Whittles and Xavier Didelot of Imperial College London, concluded.

They arrived at the point by first digging into historic population and death records of Eyam—now known as “plague village.” The researchers looked at factors such as age, wealth, household structure, and gender of the 257 people who died of plague. The deaths, which began after the delivery of flea-infested cloth from London, lasted from September 1665 to October 1666.

Next, the researchers used a stochastic compartmental model and Bayesian analytical methods to recreate the pattern of deaths and trajectory of the outbreak revealed by the records. The model included rodent-to-human transmission and human-to-human transmission, which was estimated to occur within a fixed window of 11 days between exposure, infection, and death. (While there were oral reports that three villagers recovered from the plague, those weren’t recorded in documents so the researchers tossed them out of their main analysis. However, when they did try including them, it didn’t alter their overall findings.)

The researchers found that human-to-human transmission accounted for 75 percent of all infections, with age, wealth, and household structure playing big roles in who got sick. Kids and family members of victims were the groups most affected by the plague. The village’s wealthy were less likely to get the plague, possibly due to less contact with general village folk and vermin.

Plague is known to transmit from person-to-person in bodily fluids and aerosols—formed by coughing, which is generally associated with pneumonic plague. But the researchers speculate that such transmission routes were unlikely, given the historical records of people’s symptoms, which rarely included pneumonia. Instead, the researchers hypothesize that lice and human fleas may have been a main bridge by which Yersinia got around. And the finding makes sense with the spread among lower-class kids, who could easily share head lice while playing.

Though the study looked at just one, isolated, historic outbreak, the authors argue that the “results feed into the long ongoing debate about the role of interhuman transmission through human ectoparasites.”

Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2016. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2016.0618  (About DOIs).

Parallel zum hochgelobten Uncharted 4 für die Playstation 4 hat Sony mit Uncharted Fortune Hunter auch ein neues Mobilspiel veröffentlicht. Hier müssen Nathan und Sully Schätze finden - der Weg dorthin gestaltet sich allerdings ganz anders. (Uncharted, Spieletest)