ReHacked vol. 251: Each Facebook User Is Monitored by Thousands of Companies, DOOM released under GPLv2, Kaprekar's routine and more

Haier Threatens Legal Action Against Home Assistant Plugin Developer | Hackaday #software #copyrights

Appliance manufacturer Haier has been integrating IoT features into their newer products, and as is so common these days, users are expected to install their “hOn” mobile application to access them. Not satisfied with that limitation, [Andre Basche] reverse engineered the protocol used by the app, and released a Python library and associated Home Assistant plugin to interface with a wide array of Haier appliances, which includes brands like Hoover, Candy, GE Appliances and others.

Unfortunately, it looks like his efforts have gotten him into a bit of legal hot water. In an issue recently opened on the project’s GitHub page, [Andre] explains the circumstances and legal options that have led him to consider pulling the repositories completely — mostly due to the cost of mounting a legal defense to the cease & desist from Haier Europe.

What’s ironic here is that Haier has been part of the Connectivity Standard Alliance (CSA) since 2022, whose goal is to ‘promote universal open IoT standards’, including Matter.

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Anime: A Slave Industry #society #economy

Reaching the heights of almost $25 Billion dollars, anime is a market that has exploded in the past decade, outputting some of the most stunning stories, animations, and visuals the world has ever seen.

However, for so much success - for so much fanfare - the anime industry itself is shrouded in a fog; not because it's actually mysterious, but because people just don't particularly care enough to look through the glass.

This article expands on my documentary piece that explores how anime became an industry that pays its workers $5/day - apathetic workers that don't seem to care about the plight they're in, to a world that's ignorant, whether out of choice or not.

Canadian Man Stuck in Triangle of E-Commerce Fraud – Krebs on Security #privacy #security #internet

A Canadian man who says he’s been falsely charged with orchestrating a complex e-commerce scam is seeking to clear his name. His case appears to involve “triangulation fraud,” which occurs when a consumer purchases something online — from a seller on Amazon or eBay, for example — but the seller doesn’t actually own the item for sale. Instead, the seller purchases the item from an online retailer using stolen payment card data. In this scam, the unwitting buyer pays the scammer and receives what they ordered, and very often the only party left to dispute the transaction is the owner of the stolen payment card.

Researchers Claim First Functioning Graphene-Based Chip - IEEE Spectrum #technology

Researchers at Georgia Tech, in Atlanta, have developed what they are calling the world’s first functioning graphene-based semiconductor. This breakthrough holds the promise to revolutionize the landscape of electronics, enabling faster traditional computers and offering a new material for future quantum computers.

The research, published on 3 January in Natureand led by Walt de Heer, a professor of physics at Georgia Tech, focuses on leveraging epitaxial graphene, a crystal structure of carbon chemically bonded to silicon carbide (SiC). This novel semiconducting material, dubbed semiconducting epitaxial graphene (SEC)—or alternatively, epigraphene—boasts enhanced electron mobility compared with that of traditional silicon, allowing electrons to traverse with significantly less resistance. The outcome is transistors capable of operating at terahertz frequencies, offering speeds 10 times as fast as that of the silicon-based transistors used in current chips.

J.S. Bach's Opera, "The Coffee Cantata," Sings the Praises of the Great Stimulating Drink (1735) | Open Culture #music #art #history

Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1685–1750) was also appar­ent­ly a cof­fee enthu­si­ast. So much so that he wrote a com­po­si­tion about the bev­er­age. Although known most­ly for his litur­gi­cal music, his Cof­fee Can­ta­ta (AKA Schweigt stille, plaud­ert nicht, BWV 211) is a rare exam­ple of a sec­u­lar work by the com­pos­er. The short com­ic opera was writ­ten (cir­ca 1735) for a musi­cal ensem­ble called The Col­legium Musicum based in a sto­ried Zimmerman’s cof­fee house in Leipzig, Ger­many. The whole can­ta­ta seems very much to have been writ­ten with the local audi­ence in mind.

Each Facebook User Is Monitored by Thousands of Companies - Consumer Reports #privacy

Using a panel of 709 volunteers who shared archives of their Facebook data, Consumer Reports found that a total of 186,892 companies sent data about them to the social network. On average, each participant in the study had their data sent to Facebook by 2,230 companies. That number varied significantly, with some panelists’ data listing over 7,000 companies providing their data. The Markup helped Consumer Reports recruit participants for the study. Participants downloaded an archive of the previous three years of their data from their Facebook settings, then provided it to Consumer Reports.

How to decrease overall security #security

German law is making security research a risky business.

Current news: A court found a developer guilty of “hacking.” His crime: he was tasked with looking into a software that produced way too many log messages. And he discovered that this software was making a MySQL connection to the vendor’s database server.

When he checked that MySQL connection, he realized that the database contained data belonging to not merely his client but all of the vendor’s customers. So he immediately informed the vendor – and while they fixed this vulnerability they also pressed charges.

Hospitals owned by private equity are harming patients, reports find | Ars Technica #health

Private equity firms are increasingly buying hospitals across the US, and when they do, patients suffer, according to two separate reports. Specifically, the equity firms cut corners, slash services, lay off staff, lower quality of care, take on substantial debt, and reduce charity care, leading to lower ratings and more medical errors, the reports collectively find.

Last week, the financial watchdog organization Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) released a report delving into the state of two of the nation's largest hospital systems, Lifepoint and ScionHealth—both owned by private equity firm Apollo Global Management. Through those two systems, Apollo runs 220 hospitals in 36 states, employing around 75,000 people.

DOOM released under GPLv2 #software #copyrights

Flowblade - Free & Libre Video Editor #software

Flowblade is a multitrack non-linear video editor released under GPL3 license. From beginners to masters, Flowblade helps make your vision a reality of image and sound.

Hacking into a Toyota/Eicher Motors insurance company by exploiting their premium calculator website #security

What is Wirth’s Law? — Definition by Techslang #computing #hardware #software

Wirth’s Law is a well-known saying in computer programming that states, “Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.” That creates a problem as the software slows down despite the hardware’s improved processing power.

Why new hires often get paid more than existing employees - bloomberry

One of the most enlightening moments in my career was when I discovered a new coworker was making…

bloomberryhenleyweng

Reason 1: Companies actually want you to leave

Reason 2: Salary raises are capped every year, and hiring budgets > budgets for raises

Reason 3: HR teams don’t realize the long-term implications of paying new employees more than tenured employees

Reason 4: Employers overvalue experience collected elsewhere

Reason 5: Retaining employees is a problem very few want to solve because of inertia

So knowing all this, what can you do as an employee if you find out you’re getting paid less than your peers in the same level?

1. Gather as much information about how compensation is managed in your company

2. Have an open conversation with your manager about compensation

3. Hand in a competing offer

The beauty and danger in Victorian Glass Fire Grenades – Museum Crush #history

When they were first introduced in the nineteenth century, Glass Fire Grenades were produced as decorative glass bottles with a bulbous bottom, long neck and usually patterned with the company name on them. So they are actually very pretty – for something designed to put out a fire.

We have 21 examples of them in the collection of the London Fire Brigade Museum.

The earliest ones date to c.1880 and were filled with salt water, a mix of common table salt and ammonium chloride, which in theory is useful because salt water doesn’t freeze under normal conditions and the heated ammonium chloride produced fumes that should help to suppress the fire.
more like this

However, you are only talking about a pint of liquid in them, so they are quite small and their effectiveness is uncertain.

There were two main methods of using them; you either had them at grab height in a metal rack, which allowed you to pick them up and throw them at the base of the fire, or in larger homes and workplaces they were suspended from the ceiling in special brackets. The heat would cause wax parts to melt or the glass to break, and a deflection component would distribute the contents like a form of sprinkler.

6174 - Wikipedia #science

The above process, known as Kaprekar's routine, will always reach its fixed point, 6174, in at most 7 iterations. Once 6174 is reached, the process will continue yielding 7641 – 1467 = 6174.

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods #datascience

Haiku OS: The Open Source BeOS You Can Daily Drive In 2024 | Hackaday #software

Haiku is one of those open source operating systems that seem to be both exceedingly well-known while flying completely under the radar. Part of this is probably due to it being an open source version and continuation of the Be Operating System (BeOS). Despite its strong feature set in the 1990s, BeOS never got much love in the wider computer market. Nevertheless, it has a strong community that after twenty-two years of development has now reached a point where you can daily drive it, according to the [Action Retro] channel on YouTube.

World’s five richest men double their money as poorest get poorer | Inequality | The Guardian #economy #society

The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes to $869bn (£681.5bn) since 2020, while the world’s poorest 60% – almost 5 billion people – have lost money.

The details come in a report by Oxfam as the world’s richest people gather from Monday in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum meeting of political leaders, corporate executives and the super-rich.

A woman bought a vintage dress at an antique store. It had a secret pocket with a mysterious note | CNN #history

“This particular code was not meant for secrecy at all. Telegraphic codes were used for two main reasons: secrecy and economy,” Chan told CNN. “The weather code was for the latter. Because you were charged by the word in a telegram, they wanted to shorten or compress a weather report into as few words as possible to save on costs.”

The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit - Aftermath #internet #ai

The Internet used to be so simple to use that people collectively coined the term “let me Google that for you” to make fun of people who had the audacity of asking other people questions online. In the future I fear that people will have no other choice but to ask people for information from the Internet, because right now it’s all full of AI dogshit.

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