Imagine running your favorite Windows applications and drivers in an open-source environment you can trust. That’s ReactOS. Not just an Open but also a Free operating system.
Source: Front Page | ReactOS Project
Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware
Tractor hacking is growing increasingly popular because John Deere and other manufacturers have made it impossible to perform “unauthorized” repair on farm equipment, which farmers see as an attack on their sovereignty and quite possibly an existential threat to their livelihood if their tractor breaks at an inopportune time.
Source: Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware – Motherboard
A license agreement John Deere required farmers to sign in October forbids nearly all repair and modification to farming equipment, and prevents farmers from suing for “crop loss, lost profits, loss of goodwill, loss of use of equipment … arising from the performance or non-performance of any aspect of the software.”
Hundreds of Cisco switches vulnerable to flaw found in WikiLeaks files
An attacker can exploit the vulnerability by sending a malformed protocol-specific Telnet command while establishing a connection to the affected device, because of a flaw in how the protocol fails to properly process some commands.
Cisco said that there are “no workarounds” to address the vulnerability, but it said that disabling Telnet would “eliminate” some risks.
Source: Hundreds of Cisco switches vulnerable to flaw found in WikiLeaks files | ZDNet
Washington Post Licenses Publishing Technology to Tronc
AWS has allowed developers of all sizes to access cloud computing services, and the Post wants to do the same for publishers with its Arc division. The entire Arc platform is hosted by AWS, and publishers pay based on the amount of traffic flowing to their properties once they’re up and running.
Source: Washington Post Licenses Publishing Technology to Tronc – WSJ
According to Mr. Prakash, most digital publishing systems are built by technology companies with little experience in how newsrooms and media businesses operate, which gives Arc an advantage.
Need an SSH client on Windows? Don’t use Putty or CygWin…use Git
Ok, maybe not…but its very likely that if you are reading this and find yourself needing to SSH here and there, you also use GIT. Well many are unaware that git for windows bundles several Linux familiar tools. Many might use these in the git bash shell.
Source: Need an SSH client on Windows? Don’t use Putty or CygWin…use Git — Hurry Up and Wait!
Scaling Financial Reporting at Airbnb
Going from declarative programming to functional programming has been a powerful paradigm shift for us to think about financial processing and accounting. We can now think of this system as a straightforward actor/handler system rather than getting mired in complicated SQL-join logic.
The SEC just handed Bitcoin a huge setback
The Securities and Exchange Commission has denied the application for the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust ETF, in a stunning defeat for its founders, the Winklevoss Twins. In an order today, the commission found that the proposed fund was too susceptible to fraud, due to the unregulated nature of Bitcoin. The result is a major setback for the fund, and a frustrating false start for the crypto-currency at large.
Source: The SEC just handed Bitcoin a huge setback – The Verge
Tesla’s new solar energy station will power Hawaii at night
This is the first big project from Tesla and SolarCity since the acquisition. Both companies believe this station is the biggest combination solar panel and storage facility in the world. With approximately 55,000 solar cells spread over about 45 acres, it’ll be tough to find anything larger.
Source: Tesla’s new solar energy station will power Hawaii at night
John Steele Pleads Guilty, Admits Entire Scheme
In short, Steele admits that he and Hansmeier used sham entities to obtain the copyright to (or in some cases film) porn, uploaded it to file-sharing websites, and then filed “false and deceptive” copyright suits against downloaders designed to conceal their role in distributing the films and their stake in the outcomes. They lied to courts themselves, sent others to court to lie, lied at depositions, lied in sworn affidavits, created sham entities as plaintiffs, created fraudulent hacking allegations to try to obtain discovery into the identity of downloaders, used “ruse defendants” (strawmen, in effect) to get courts to approve broad discovery into IP addresses.
Source: Prenda Saga Update: John Steele Pleads Guilty, Admits Entire Scheme | Popehat
The wheels grind slowly, my friends, but they do grind.
NASA grants free access to its technologies in latest software release
This third edition of the publication has contributions from all the agency’s centres on data processing/storage, business systems, operations, propulsion and aeronautics. It includes many of the tools NASA uses to explore space and broaden our understanding of the universe. Each catalogue entry is accompanied with a plain language description of what it does.
Source: NASA grants free access to its technologies in latest software release