Tag: NETHAPPENINGS NEWSLETTER

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TECHNOLOGY

Comcast Prepares to Screw Over Millions With Data Caps in 2021

CAUSE ALL THAT CORD CUTTING!

Comcast will start charging Xfinity customers in northeastern US states overage fees for exceeding their monthly data cap. As The Verge reports, customers not on an unlimited plan who exceed 1.2 TB of data in a month will have to pay $10 for every 50 GB of data they go over, topping out at $100. To put that into context, streaming HD video over uses about 3 GB per hour. Cloud gaming over something like Stadia uses about 10 GB of data every hour at 1080p. So if you’re not watching your data usage carefully, you could end up with a higher than normal monthly bill.The change affects Xfintiy customers in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Vermont, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia, as well as parts of North Carolina and Ohio.

ZUCKERBERG FACEBOOK NAZI

Facebook Condemned For Providing Platform To Neo-Nazi Network – Humans For Ethical Technology. Facebook’s leadership endangered public safety by letting Neo-Nazis finance their activities through Facebook and Instagram. Facebook was first told about this problem two years ago and failed to act.”
#DELETEFACEBOOK NOW UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE CULPABLE YOURSELF CONSIDERING YOU ARE THE ENABLER.

Cyber security issues and how to handle those who are abusing the domain name system.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/icann-can-stand-against-censorship-and-avoid-another-org-debacle-keeping-content

ICANN Can Stand Against Censorship (And Avoid Another .ORG Debacle) by Keeping Content Regulation and Other Dangerous Policies Out of Its Registry Contracts
Mitch StoltzNovember 22, 2020
The Internet’s domain name system is not the place to police speech. ICANN, the organization that regulates that system, is legally bound not to act as the Internet’s speech police, but its legal commitments are riddled with exceptions, and aspiring censors have already used those exceptions in harmful ways. This was one factor that made the failed takeover of the .ORG registry such a dangerous situation. But now, ICANN has an opportunity to curb this abuse and recommit to its narrow mission of keeping the DNS running, by placing firm limits on so-called “voluntary public interest commitments” (PICs, recently renamed Registry Voluntary Commitments, or RVCs).

ICANN Can Stand Against Censorship (And Avoid Another .ORG Debacle) by Keeping Content Regulation and Other Dangerous Policies Out of Its Registry Contracts

There have been entire registrars that have been owned by criminals and set up solely for hosting malware and phish related domains. And legitimate to possibly fly by night, there are registrars out there, and tlds out there, that have massive percentages of malicious domains on their service.

The eff has a consistent position of seeing spam filtering or other abuse enforcement as a form of censorship so much so that I’m getting some severe déjà vu on seeing this.

I last ah, discussed this with them on IP and Declan’s politech several years back in 2006, an era whose anti abuse problems now seem delightfully banal compared to what we are up against today.  https://techliberation.com/2006/04/22/aols-censorship/

The arguments from those 14 year old threads could apply here as well, almost word for word

If what is being proposed here – summarised as  “we are not the Internet police”, which is roughly the internet version of “not in my backyard” goes through, the trust we have in the internet is set to take an even more severe hit than it faces from any backroom corporate takeover attempts and revolving door jobs for former ICANN executives.

Trying to fix corporate governance issues that exist across the board by removing enforcement mechanisms and claiming that these are solely meant for censorship and a sellout to big brands is pitifully wrong headed and sadly, none of the arguments apply to work any better, and in fact appear set to cause worse side effects, than they did in the mid 2000s.

The internet is a nasty place and the frontier here contains rather more dangerous, and for the most part faceless, entities than either the bandits of the old frontier or the borg, cybermen or any other space alien threat of the new frontier – at least those needed to come before your spaceship before they could cause any damage – here the damage is half a world away and has a near unlimited reach.

–srs

CHINA

Mao Zedong’s Lesson for Donald Trump’s America
But it was Mao’s own public proclamation on August 5, his call to bombard the headquarters, that fully set the nation ablaze. Mao, echoing and now formally putting his name behind the conspiracy theories that had been swirling for months, declared that comrades from the party center down to the organization’s lowest-level tendrils had adopted a reactionary bourgeois line, were committed to overturning the revolution, and were actively imposing a “white terror” upon the people. The real threat to the nation’s survival, Mao argued, was no longer the holdouts from the old order—the capitalists, the landlords, the Confucianists. Nor was it China’s turncoat former allies, the Soviets. Nor even was it the worst of the imperialists abroad, the Americans. Rather, the existential threat now resided within the heart of the Communist Party itself, in what today would be termed the “deep state.”

Shanghai airport Covid scare sparks ‘chaotic’ mass testing
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55039627
Official pictures released of the testing appear to show an orderly, calm process. However, other videos believed to be of the mass testing show officials in hazmat suits corralling large, yelling crowds into a restricted space. Many of the videos have since disappeared, and state media have not reported on any chaos, saying only that more than 16,000 people were tested overnight. According to China’s Global Times newspaper, mass testing began on Sunday afternoon after several cargo workers and close contacts tested positive. Shanghai has reported at least seven local cases since 9 November, mainly involving this group, following five months with no new infections. Pictures accompanying the newspaper’s report show neat and orderly queues, with lines winding inside the airport’s multi-storey carpark. But posts on Chinese social media platform Weibo paint a different picture, saying the testing turned into chaos when too many workers flooded into the site, pushing it beyond capacity.

BITCOIN

Bitcoin heads for all-time high

1:47 EST 11/24/2020
1 BTC in USD = $19,230.57

Visa CEO Says Payments Giant Implementing Long-Term Crypto Strategy

Alfred Kelly, CEO of financial services goliath Visa, is unveiling the company’s long-term strategy in the crypto space as cryptocurrencies are set to play a much larger role in the post-pandemic global economy.
Visa is already working with 25 crypto firms. “We’re facilitating putting a Visa credential into their system where you can convert your crypto based on a fiat currency and put the funds in a wallet where you can use them at anywhere Visa is accepted. It’s a way of making those funds valuable and usable across our network.” Kelly also sees central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as a major development that Visa is looking to facilitate. Speaking at the CNBC Evolve Summit, Kelly says that as more people turn digital during the pandemic, cryptocurrency is becoming a more prominent player in global transactions and Visa is looking forward to being in the middle of payment flows made through fiat-based cryptocurrencies. “Crypto is a developing part of payments in the world. It’s in a very nascent state right now. We are very interested in cryptocurrencies. We are not as interested in crypto that is more of a commodity-based play. We’re interested in crypto that ultimately becomes fiat-based, so there’s a clear understanding of the value when there’s an exchange of crypto for the purchase of a good or a service.”

LAW

FINALLY we will get rid of 87 year old Dianne Feinstein who hugs Mitch McConnell just like it’s old times where good manners and drinking tea with her pinky in the air is filled with goodness for Moscow Mitch!

Dianne Feinstein will step down as top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary panel
Criticized for not being aggressive enough in Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings and a million other reasons. BUT this feeble person is still going to serve as a senior Democrat on the Judiciary, Intelligence, Appropriations and Rules committees as we work with the Biden administration.”
Damn it to hell!  !  !  Nobody should be on any committee in their 80’s. Make them get out!  Get rid of these people! This country needs Young 30 – 40 – 50 year olds on these committees who know and understand the 2020 world we live in.

What the hell do you think Feinstein understands about technology! Forget it! She doesn’t.

Georgia GOP Senator Kelly Loeffler Just Got Caught Violating the Law Georgia Republican Kelly Loeffler is the richest member of the United States Senate. The appeal was a direct request for campaign money, made inside a federal building. That’s illegal. The section of the Code of Laws of the United States of America dealing with the solicitation of campaign funds inside federal buildings, 18 USC 607,  plainly states:

It shall be unlawful for an individual who is an officer or employee of the Federal Government, including the President, Vice President, and Members of Congress, to solicit or receive a donation of money or other thing of value in connection with a Federal, State, or local election, while in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by an officer or employee of the United States, from any person.

Europe looks to crack open data encryption on messaging services like WhatsApp

SCIENCE

 Why a negative Covid-19 test before Thanksgiving isn’t an all-clear

Scientists don’t yet know exactly when a person who is infected with the coronavirus will start testing positive for the virus. There are situations when a person could test negative, be infected, and also be contagious. It’s also possible — since the virus multiplies itself exponentially in the body very quickly — that someone could test negative in the morning (and not be contagious), but by the afternoon test positive (and be very contagious).

#GetVaccinated
GET VACCINATED WHEN YOU CAN

Light-controllable cancer immunotherapy offers new ways to kill inaccessible cancer cells/tumours
Targeted immunotherapies which selectively kill cancer cells have emerged as promising cancer treatments for particularly deadly haematological cancers