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Submission + - Windows leak site BuildFeed closes down (betanews.com)

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: After five years of leaking information about unreleased builds of Windows, BuildFeed has shut up shop.

Over the weekend, the site posted a slew of build numbers including references to onecore and shell_devices_foldable. But there will be no more leaks coming from the BuildFeed. Citing "extensive internal pressures and external pressures", site founder Thomas Hounsell says that he has terminated his project with immediate effect.

Comment Re:RSS for the masses? (Score 1) 109

Yes, using an RSS reader for most sites does reduce ad revenue.

Instead of visiting the home page of the site, and seeing all the top tier front page ads and the click-bait paid articles and opening a few tabs of interesting content (and seeing the ads again) and generally lingering, you're heading straight into one page of the content.

Sites make less ad revenue from RSS readers because you're not hanging around.

Comment Re:I think I should create a macro (Score 4, Interesting) 195

I'm loathe to give good advice to a bad idea, but one possible way to "break the encryption" for Government wouldn't be a direct attack on the cryptography, but a sanctioned attack on the client:

"Hey, Facebook. Government agency here. Could you silently instruct the Messenger app on target X or all users in Y area to encrypt using this escrow key for Z days? Tnx."

Submission + - Recycling is Dying 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Aaron C. Davis writes in the Washington Post that recycling, once a profitable business for cities and private employers alike, has become a money-sucking enterprise. Almost every recycling facility in the country is running in the red and recyclers say that more than 2,000 municipalities are paying to dispose of their recyclables instead of the other way around. “If people feel that recycling is important — and I think they do, increasingly — then we are talking about a nationwide crisis,” says David Steiner, chief executive of Waste Management, the nation’s largest recycler.

The problem with recylcing is that a storm of falling oil prices, a strong dollar and a weakened economy in China have sent prices for American recyclables plummeting worldwide. Trying to encourage conservation, progressive lawmakers and environmentalists have made matters worse. By pushing to increase recycling rates with bigger and bigger bins — while demanding almost no sorting by consumers — the recycling stream has become increasingly polluted and less valuable, imperiling the economics of the whole system. “We kind of got everyone thinking that recycling was free,” says Bill Moore. “It’s never really been free, and in fact, it’s getting more expensive.”

One big problem is that China doesn't want to buy our garbage anymore. In the past China had sent so many consumer goods to the United States that all the shipping containers were coming back empty. So US companies began stuffing the return-trip containers with recycled cardboard boxes, waste paper and other scrap. China could, in turn, harvest the raw materials. Everyone won. But China has launched "Operation Green Fence" — a policy to prohibit the import of unwashed post-consumer plastics and other "contaminated" waste shipments. In China, containerboard, a common packaging product from recycled American paper, is trading at just over $400 a metric ton, down from nearly $1,000 in 2010. China also needs less recycled newsprint; the last paper mill in Shanghai closed this year. "If the materials we are exporting are so contaminated that they are being rejected by those we sell to," says Valerie Androutsopoulos, "maybe it’s time to take another look at dual stream recycling."

Submission + - Australia passes site-blocking legislation (smh.com.au)

Submitted by ausrob
ausrob writes: Cementing their position as Australia's most backwards and dangerous government in recent memory comes this nasty bit of legislation, riddled with holes (which is nothing new for this decrepit Government): "The legislation allows rights holders to go to a Federal Court judge to get overseas websites, or "online locations", blocked that have the "primary purpose" of facilitating copyright infringement. If a rights holder is successful in their blocking request, Australian internet providers, such as Telstra and Optus, will need to comply with a judge's order by disabling access to the infringing location."

Comment Re:You know what curbs piracy? (Score 1) 133

by Gavin Rogers (#44805125) Attached to: Research Shows "Three Strikes" Anti-piracy Laws Don't Work

However, you can quite easily get a family of four on a modest income to pay $10 a month for Netflix.

Which is a good idea, but it assumes that you live in a country that has access to Netflix or an equivalent service. Most of us living outside of the US don't.

For the rest of us, there's the local cable TV monopoly (who abuse that monopoly to stop legal download services competing with them) ... or Bittorrent.
Security

Submission + - Murdoch faces allegations of sabotage (afr.com) 1

Submitted by
Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: "Neil Chenoweth, of the Australian Financial Review, reports that the BBC program Panorama is making new allegations against News Corp of serious misconduct. This time it involves the NDS division of News Corp, which makes conditional access cards for pay TV. It seems that NDS also ran a sabotage operation, hiring pirates to crack the cards of rival companies and posting the code on The House of Ill Compute (thoic.com), a web site hosted by NDS.

ITV Digital collapsed in March 2002 with losses of more than £1 billion, overwhelmed by mass piracy, as well as technical restrictions and expensive sports contracts. Its collapse left Murdoch-controlled BSkyB the dominant pay TV provider in the UK.

Chenoweth reports that James Murdoch has been an advocate for tougher penalties for pirates, “These are property rights, these are basic property rights,” he said. “There is no difference from going into a store and stealing a packet of Pringles or a handbag, and stealing something online. Right?""

Comment Re:What? (Score 5, Interesting) 128

by Gavin Rogers (#38469370) Attached to: Major Australian Retailer Accused of Selling Infected Hard Drives

Selling used stuff as new aside for a second

Umm. No.

The media blowup is being fuelled by "I bought a hard disk and it had hard core porn on it!" sensationalism but seem to be ignoring this deeper issue -
Dick Smith Electronics, Harvey Norman, JB-HiFi and the rest have been getting away with it for years but the fact is selling used goods (no matter how good a condition it's in) as new is illegal.

They can ask the same price for it if the return is in great condition but they can't just seal it back up and pop it back on the shelf next to the new unopened boxes.

Comment Key role in standardisation? (Score 2, Insightful) 64

by Gavin Rogers (#34802018) Attached to: US Revamps NIST's Standard-Setting Efforts

From TFA, "Since World War II, the United States has played a key role in international standardization"

Umm. Played a key role in international standardisation? This is a country - the only major industrialised nation in the entire world - that so far refuses to embrace the metric system. Key role, indeed.

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