John Ribeiro
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Pakistan cybercrime law scares by its vagueness
Pakistan’s National Assembly has passed a cybercrime bill that provides for censorship of the internet and could also be misused by the vagueness of some of its provisions.Section 34 of the new Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act gives authorities the power to remove or block access to a variety of content.It provides for such action in “the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan or any part thereof, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court or commission of or incitement to an offence under this Act, ” according to a copy of the bill on the website of the Digital Rights Foundation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Twitter is not liable for ISIS activity on its service, judge rules
Twitter is not liable for providing material support to the Islamic State group, also referred to as the ISIS, by allowing its members to sign up and use accounts on its site, a federal judge in California ruled Wednesday.The lawsuit against Twitter filed by the familes of two victims of a terror attack in Jordan is similar to another filed by the father of a victim of the Paris attack in November against Twitter, Google and Facebook for allegedly providing material support to terrorists by providing them a forum for propaganda, fund raising and recruitment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Twitter is not liable for ISIS activity on its service, judge rules
Twitter is not liable for providing material support to the Islamic State group, also referred to as the ISIS, by allowing its members to sign up and use accounts on its site, a federal judge in California ruled Wednesday.The lawsuit against Twitter filed by the familes of two victims of a terror attack in Jordan is similar to another filed by the father of a victim of the Paris attack in November against Twitter, Google and Facebook for allegedly providing material support to terrorists by providing them a forum for propaganda, fund raising and recruitment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Ecuador says Swedes will question Assange at its UK embassy
Ecuador has granted a request from Swedish prosecutors to question WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange at its embassy in London, where he has been holed up for over four years.Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador in 2012 after he slipped into the country’s embassy in the U.K. He is wanted by police in Sweden for questioning in connection with a sexual assault investigation.U.K. police have said that they would arrest Assange to meet an extradition request from Sweden if he steps out from the Ecuador embassy. But Assange and his supporters have expressed fear that from Sweden, he could be transferred to the U.S. to face charges under the country's Espionage Act.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Oracle says it didn’t ask employee to cook cloud accounts
Oracle has denied in a California federal court charges leveled by a former manager that she was sacked after she refused to cook accounts in the company’s cloud business and threatened to blow the whistle on the accounting practices.The software and cloud computing giant appears to be fleshing out its original stand that the employee had been terminated for poor performance and not as a whistleblower, which would give her a number of protections under securities laws.In a filing in June in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Svetlana Blackburn, a senior finance manager for North America SaaS/Cloud Revenue, alleged that her superiors had instructed her to “to add millions of dollars in accruals to financial reports, with no concrete or foreseeable billing to support the numbers," an act that she had warned was improper and suspect accounting.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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White House software code sharing policy gains steam
The White House has released its Federal Source Code policy that promotes reuse of new source code developed by government agencies across the federal government.The new policy also sets up a pilot program “that requires agencies, when commissioning new custom software, to release at least 20 percent of new custom-developed code as Open Source Software (OSS) for three years,” Tony Scott, U.S. CIO and Anne E. Rung, chief acquisition officer, wrote in a memorandum to heads of departments and agencies on Monday.The federal government spends every year over US$6 billion on software through more than 42,000 transactions, but agencies that procure custom-developed source code do not necessarily make their new code broadly available for reuse by the federal government.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Delta Air Lines flights delayed by widespread computer outage
Delta said Monday morning that its flights awaiting departure were delayed because of a widespread computer outage.The airline did not provide details of the computer outage or of the number of flights affected, but said in a statement on its website that the problem had affected flights scheduled for the morning.The extent of the problem appeared to be global because the airline wrote in a number of tweets that “our systems are down everywhere.” “Flights enroute are operating normally. Delta is advising travelers to check the status of their flights this morning while the issue is being addressed,” the airline said in a brief statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Bitfinex asks users to share losses of bitcoin theft
Bitfinex, the digital currency exchange in Hong Kong that reported a bitcoin theft last week, has decided to shave a little over 36 percent from its customers' accounts and assets to make up for losses from the hack.“Upon logging into the platform, customers will see that they have experienced a generalized loss percentage of 36.067%,” Bitfinex said in a blog post Saturday. It promised an announcement later on the details of the methodology used to arrive at the losses."This is the closest approximation to what would happen in a liquidation context," Bitfinex wrote. Customers will be issued a token labeled BFX to record their losses, though the exchange is still not clear about how it will compensate them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Apple losing smartphone share in India despite big efforts
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has described India as one of the company's fastest growing markets and has proposed to the government a program to offer refurbished phones in the country as a way to get around the high prices of its devices in a price-sensitive market.Cook is also said to have discussed with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May the "possibilities of manufacturing and retailing in India," a move that would help the company avoid the high import duties on smartphones and other products that the authorities have imposed to encourage local manufacture.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Banner Health alerts 3.7M potential victims of hack of its computers
Banner Health, a provider of hospital services, has notified by mail 3.7 million people -- including patients, health plan members, healthcare providers and customers at its food and beverage outlets -- that their payment card and health plan data, among other information, may have been compromised.The provider said Wednesday that it discovered on July 7 that cyberattackers may have gained access to computers that process payment card data at the food and beverage outlets at some of its locations. Payment cards that were used at these outlets at certain Banner Health locations from June 23 to July 7 this year may have been affected, the provider said. Card payments for medical services were not affected, according to the investigation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Banner Health alerts 3.7M potential victims of hack of its computers
Banner Health, a provider of hospital services, has notified by mail 3.7 million people -- including patients, health plan members, healthcare providers and customers at its food and beverage outlets -- that their payment card and health plan data, among other information, may have been compromised.The provider said Wednesday that it discovered on July 7 that cyberattackers may have gained access to computers that process payment card data at the food and beverage outlets at some of its locations. Payment cards that were used at these outlets at certain Banner Health locations from June 23 to July 7 this year may have been affected, the provider said. Card payments for medical services were not affected, according to the investigation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Sony does well in games but smartphone business shrinks
An increase in games revenue helped Sony counter to an extent shrinking business in smartphones and the impact of earthquakes in Japan's Kumamoto region on production of the camera sensors that the company supplies to Apple and other smartphone vendors.Sony reported Friday that its revenue was down 10.8 percent to 1.61 trillion yen (US$15.73 billion) in its first quarter ended June 30, while its profit decreased by 74.3 percent year-on-year to 21.2 billion yen.The revenue of its game and network services unit grew 14.5 percent year-on-year in the quarter to 330.4 billion yen mainly because of a significant increase in PlayStation 4 software sales including sales through the network. Sales of PS4 games consoles rose to 3.5 million units from 3 million in the same quarter in the previous year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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WikiLeaks’ methods questioned by whistleblower Edward Snowden
Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, has censured WikiLeaks’ release of information without proper curation.On Thursday, Snowden, who has embarrassed the U.S. government with revelations of widespread NSA surveillance, said that WikiLeaks was mistaken in not at least modestly curating the information it releases. “Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake,” Snowden said in a tweet. WikiLeaks shot back at Snowden that “opportunism won't earn you a pardon from Clinton & curation is not censorship of ruling party cash flows.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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WikiLeaks’ methods questioned by whistleblower Edward Snowden
Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, has censured WikiLeaks’ release of information without proper curation.On Thursday, Snowden, who has embarrassed the U.S. government with revelations of widespread NSA surveillance, said that WikiLeaks was mistaken in not at least modestly curating the information it releases. “Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake,” Snowden said in a tweet. WikiLeaks shot back at Snowden that “opportunism won't earn you a pardon from Clinton & curation is not censorship of ruling party cash flows.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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FBI said to investigate possible hack of another Democratic Party organization
The FBI is said to be investigating yet another suspected hack of a Democratic Party organization, this time of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that raises funds for Democrats running for the House of Representatives.The previously unreported hack of the DCCC is likely to have been aimed at gathering information on donors rather than steal funds, four sources told Reuters.The intrusion is likely to raise fresh concerns about Russia trying to meddle in the U.S. elections. Another hack of the Democratic National Committee, suspected by security investigators to have been perpetrated by Russians, led to an embarrassing dump on Friday of leaked emails that showed that the Democratic Party's national strategy and fund-raising committee had favored Hillary Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders, her rival in the presidential nomination campaign.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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FBI said to investigate possible hack of another Democratic Party organization
The FBI is said to be investigating yet another suspected hack of a Democratic Party organization, this time of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that raises funds for Democrats running for the House of Representatives.The previously unreported hack of the DCCC is likely to have been aimed at gathering information on donors rather than steal funds, four sources told Reuters.The intrusion is likely to raise fresh concerns about Russia trying to meddle in the U.S. elections. Another hack of the Democratic National Committee, suspected by security investigators to have been perpetrated by Russians, led to an embarrassing dump on Friday of leaked emails that showed that the Democratic Party's national strategy and fund-raising committee had favored Hillary Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders, her rival in the presidential nomination campaign.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Smartphone market inches back to growth with Samsung holding lead
The smartphone market is showing signs of growth again, but barely, with shipments up nearly 1 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, according to Strategy Analytics. The research firm, which had reported a 3 percent drop in the market in the last quarter, said Wednesday that there are indications that the market had bottomed out in the first half of this year. Multiple new product launches from vendors including Samsung Electronics and Apple could see an improving growth outlook for the second half of the year. Another research firm Canalys reported Tuesday that smartphone shipments had returned to modest growth in the second quarter after a disappointing first quarter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Qualcomm agrees to pay $19.5M to settle charges of bias against women
Qualcomm has agreed to pay US$19.5 million to settle a gender discrimination class action lawsuit that alleged that women at the company get lower pay and have lesser chances of promotion under its current programs.The settlement on behalf of a class of about 3,290 female employees was reached before suit was filed, but still requires the filing of a class complaint and a move for preliminary approval of the agreement from a judge in a federal court in California, according to Sanford Heisler, the legal firm representing the women.The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California alleges that in Qualcomm’s U.S. operations, women in science, technology, engineering, and math, known together as STEM, and related roles face discrimination in pay and promotions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Yahoo abandons fight, sells internet business to Verizon for $4.8B
Ailing Yahoo is selling off its operating business for about $4.8 billion to Verizon Communications, in a cash deal that will reduce the storied tech firm to mainly holding its cash, stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan and non-core patents.For Verizon, the acquisition will help it gain Yahoo’s 1 billion monthly active users, its internet properties and key applications like search and email, and its advertising systems. Verizon is not unfamiliar to the acquisition and integration of web companies after its 2015 acquisition of AOL for $4.4 billion, when it acquired similar assets.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 5 free Ethernet tools you should check out The transaction is expected to be completed by the first quarter of next year, subject to regulatory approvals, ending a long-drawn out bidding process for the company. After the transaction is closed, Yahoo will be integrated with AOL under Marni Walden, its executive vice president and president of the Product Innovation and New Businesses organization at Verizon, the communications company said Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Pokémon Go launches in Japan with McDonald’s as first sponsor
Pokémon Go has launched in Japan with a new revenue stream -- corporate sponsorship from McDonald’s.The free-to-download augmented reality smartphone game already earns money from in-game purchases.“Trainers in Japan, thank you for being patient. Pokémon GO is now available to download in Japan!,” the Pokémon Go Twitter account wrote on Friday.The game developed by Niantic, in which Google, Nintendo and the Pokémon Company are investors, has been a runaway success in many countries including the U.S., but its launch in its home-turf Japan was delayed reportedly amid worries that huge local demand could find the game servers wanting. Server problems have been frequently reported as the game was offered in more countries and more users got on to the game.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here