The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argues that Internet Service Providers (ISPs), particularly Tier 1, should not act as content regulators, warning it could lead to potential power abuse and censorship.
The EFF referenced Hurricane Electric, a Tier 1 ISP, which partially denied service to disrupt traffic for a controversy-ridden forum, describing it as a concerning precedent for future censorship acts that may block legal speech.
Instead of ISPs policing content, the EFF advocates for enforcing laws and privacy measures by law enforcement and courts, insisting that protecting human rights shouldn't depend on corporations acting as speech police.
The discussions revolve around an array of topics including the regulation of online speech, the role of private firms in controlling discourse, and government intervention in speech regulation.
Also touched on are the potentials consequences of blocking access to specific websites, and the primacy of free speech protection.
Other related subjects include extremist content, internet freedom, and the duties of hosting providers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), with participants expressing varying viewpoints and debating the merits of these issues.
Damien Miller has introduced keystroke timing obfuscation to ssh(1), aiming to mask the timing between keystrokes by sending interactive traffic at regular intervals and sending false keystrokes.
This new feature has been incorporated through enhancements to the SSH (Secure Shell) protocol and is expected to be adopted in other systems shortly.
Predominantly seen as a security update, it is predicted to be included in the next OpenBSD release, a free and open-source operating system known for its focus on security features.
The article underscores various facets of SSH password security, introducing keystroke timing obfuscation as a new strategy to boost security.
It elucidates different ways to camouflage passwords and provide user feedback without putting security at risk, emphasizing the importance of password masking, managers, and halting screen sharing during password entry.
It also covers alternate authentication methods like SSH keys, limitations of certain devices, hosting services, and explores topics related to encryption and network monitoring.
The author started their programming journey with JavaScript in 2013, before transitioning to other languages such as Python and eventually settling on Ruby as their preferred language.
The author has observed a shift in language popularity, noticing that Ruby, once on par with Python, has seen a decline in use.
Prompting curiosity, the author is seeking reasons behind this observed trend, leading to less usage and popularity of Ruby.
The discussion underscores the increasing popularity of Python over the last decade, outpacing other languages like Ruby and Perl, primarily due to its appeal to academia, simplicity, and ease of learning.
Python's areas of specialization, particularly in data contexts, along with its nurturing community, are other contributing factors to its standing.
Besides, various topics such as type checking, language comparisons, Python's explicit vs implicit behaviors, and packaging/dependency management challenges have been discussed, signifying Python's versatility, rich libraries, and cross-industry integration as key attributes to its popularity.
Griffin is a regulated banking service business providing API-based solutions and uses Clojure for their platform, citing merits such as immutability and an audit log.
Their platform operates on Kubernetes on AWS with FoundationDB as its database. They apply an event sourcing model and employ Netty, an asynchronous http handler, for handling payment responses.
The company emphasizes the recruitment of remote Clojure coders and rigorous testing of distributed systems to avert race conditions and errors. They employ a testing approach similar to generative testing for better error control.
The dialogue encompasses the application of the Clojure programming language in the banking sector and the expansion of API banking in the UK.
Skepticism around a new tech platform, Griffin, along with the pros and cons of cryptocurrency are also discussed.
The conversation addresses the importance of privacy and security in financial services, and evaluates the efficiency of type systems in programming languages.
Intel has introduced an 8-core, 528-thread processor featuring silicon photonics at the Hot Chips 2023 event. This processor includes a direct mesh-to-mesh optical fabric and is tailored to handle hyper-sparse data workloads.
The processor is designed with a Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), optimizing its simplicity and power efficiency.
The product is being assembled in a multi-chip package with the Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB). It is still under development and lacks a commercial name as of now.
Intel has introduced a new 8-core, 528-thread processor utilizing silicon photonics, enhancing computational efficiency, akin to Sony's Cell processor but with varying design specifications.
Following its decision to develop in-house chips, Apple has moved away from Intel processors in order to gain greater control and consolidate its platforms.
Discussions surrounding the performance and security of SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) designs are ongoing, with a specific focus on Zen SMT technology from Intel and AMD, and whether there could be a need to disable SMT.
Postmark has developed a new tool, Accessible Palette, to deal with inconsistencies in lightness and contrast ratios in its prior color system.
The tool uses the CIELAB and LCh color spaces, which offer a more precise representation of how humans perceive color.
Users can utilize Accessible Palette to create color palettes with consistent lightness and predictable contrast; however, popular design tools like Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD currently do not support these color spaces.
The topics focus on color systems, color representation, accessibility, and design considerations, highlighting the limitations and challenges of creating visually compelling and accessible designs.
Discussions include debates on the efficacy of different color spaces, algorithms, and resources, and their conformity to accessibility guidelines.
Additional topics covered are issues concerning color quality in broadcast and streaming services, and the hurdles of accurately representing colors across various mediums.
iFixit and Public Knowledge are requesting the Librarian of Congress to permit hacking of McDonald's McFlurry machines for repair purposes, arguing these machines are often unreliable and allowing digital lock breaking would facilitate diagnosis and repairs.
Currently, Taylor holds exclusive servicing contracts with McDonald's franchises, but a proposed exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) could let the franchises undertake their own repairs.
This movement comes amid a lawsuit between Taylor and Kytch, a company that created a device decoding the machines' error codes, and seeks expansion of the repair exemption to include commercial industrial equipment.
The dialogue largely involves reliability problems of McDonald's ice cream machines, the ethical implications in the tech sector and potential financial gains behind McDonald's exclusive deal with the machine supplier, Taylor.
Concerns have been raised about the use of certain parts and vendors, safety hazards, and how low-wage workers in the restaurant industry are treated.
Users expressed dissatisfaction with Taylor's products and its monopolistic position, suggesting alternatives like machines from Carpigiani.
Professor Jaime Ross from the University of Rhode Island carried out a study indicating that microplastics can penetrate all systems of the body, even the brain, leading to changes in behavior in mammals.
The research, with mice as test subjects, discovered that exposure to microplastics resulted in both changes in behavior and alternation in immune markers in the liver and brain tissues.
The study illustrates an urgent need for more investigations on health implications linked with microplastic exposure, specifically in mammals.
The dialogue examines the presence of microplastics in the human body, their possible impact on health issues like obesity, declining IQ levels, and lowering fertility rates, and the need for further research.
The conversation discusses multiple variables contributing to obesity, potential solutions, and the role of diet. A possible correlation between plastics and obesity is suggested. The discussion also extends to the impacts of plastics used in food packaging.
The debate highlights the environmental effects of single-use plastics, difficulties in phasing them out, and the significance of individual choices, cultural views, and political and economic influences. The urgency of addressing microplastics' harmful effects and seeking sustainable alternatives is stressed.
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), crucial for the routing of network traffic on the internet, is found to have significant flaws in its error handling, potentially causing network disruptions and internet outages.
The author, a professional BGP vulnerability tester, has discovered these issues in multiple vendors' BGP systems and expressed dissatisfaction with their security responses.
The author advocates for the need for vendors to be more accountable for resolving security issues, such as offering bug bounties, and criticizes the ineffectiveness of reporting security flaws directly to vendors, suggesting customer notification as an alternative.
The article criticizes the flawed error handling of BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) and highlights the controversy over the researchers who discovered these flaws.
It reviews the impact of the log4j vulnerability on network security and discusses the responsibilities of network operators and security researchers.
BGP's error handling is functional but requires enhancements, following a recent vulnerability that prompted internet-wide outages.
Fomos is an experimental operating system (OS) constructed using Rust, aiming to streamline the relationship between an application and the OS. In Fomos, an app is treated as merely a function and liaises with the OS via a Context structure.
Fomos OS encompasses attributes like sandboxing, instrumentation, debugging, and the transparent restarting of applications. To deal with older versions of apps, the OS constructs new functions within the Context.
Challenges still linger, including security and the scheduling modalities. Future plans encompass extending functionalities like permanent storage, GPU support, network connectivity, and an abstract structure for application communication.
The discussion focuses on Fomos, an experimental operating system that handles apps as functions, with prospective applications in embedded systems and AWS (Amazon Web Services) Lambda runtime.
Participants express concerns over security/safety in Fomos; potential solutions such as static analysis — examining program code without executing it — and watchdog timers — system supervisors that perform actions if something fails — are suggested.
The topic of sandboxing, encapsulating a program to limit its scope of operations, within operating systems is discussed, highlighting the associated challenges and the advantages of diverse executable formats.