A Lovely 10C Site!

The ‘DEF CON is canceled’ meme has crossed over into real life, courtesy of COVID-19. In early March we had hopes that things would be stable by August. That is no longer realistic. Currently there’s no way to gather everyone together and keep them safe, so The Dark Tangent has decided to cancel the in-person event.

Not surprising but the right move to make.

The acquisition of the 25-person start-up is the latest move in a 90-day plan that Zoom announced on April 1 to fix its security flaws. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan told CNBC the company needed a solution for users who are demanding the highest level of privacy and certainty that uninvited participants have no access to their conversations.

When Keybase is implemented, the Zoom user who schedules a meeting will be able to choose end-to-end encryption. That setting will prevent anyone from calling in by phone, which is one way people can access meetings, and will disable cloud-based recording of the chat. Yuan said it’s critical that users know that the encryption key is not on Zoom’s servers, so the company has no access to the contents of the call.

Glad I deleted my Keybase account as soon as the announcement was made. Can't trust Zoom really especially they privacy and security scandals.

The highlight of GitHub’s announcement is surely the launch of GitHub Codespaces, which gives developers a full cloud-hosted development environment in the cloud, based on Microsoft’s VS Code editor. If that name sounds familiar, that’s likely because Microsoft itself rebranded Visual Studio Code Online to Visual Studio Codespaces a week ago — and GitHub is essentially taking the same concepts and technology and is now integrating it directly inside its service. If you’ve seen VS Online/Codespaces before, the GitHub environment will look very similar.

The tight integration with their boss Microsoft has fully begun, and it's bad news as I predicted. Self-host or GitLab are the way to go these days.

According to various sources archived on Resetera and Reddit, over 2 terabytes of data was allegedly leaked onto the anonymous forum 4chan over the weekend, including the original source code for Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii.

The leaks also reportedly contain internal documentation related to GameCube, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 64 (and its 64DD add-on), Wii and the China-only iQue, showing how the systems work and the development processes behind them.

Nintendo's legal team are going to have a long week…

The billion-dollar deal set off alarm bells from the very beginning: no one in the domain name industry had ever heard of Ethos Capital, and it only had two named employees. It quickly emerged it had been secretly created by a former CEO of ICANN, and he had registered the company one day after ICANN made clear it was going to lift price caps on the 10 million .org domains, instantly making the registry worth tens of millions more.

The truth however is that ICANN’s staff and CEO were happy to bless the deal, as were several key board members, and it took the repeat intervention of other board members to stop the sale from being pushed through.

I have to give all the props to Kieren McCarthy, who has been all over this since the start of this roller coaster. As I said, even though the internet community has scored a huge win, it's far from over.

Nintendo has disabled the ability to log into a Nintendo Account using a Nintendo Network ID (NNID) after approximately 160,000 accounts were compromised by unauthorized parties. Nintendo’s statement, originally published in Japanese, says that ID and password information for NNIDs was “obtained illgally by some means other than our service” from the beginning of April.

Nicknames, date of birth, country/region, email address, and gender associated with the NNIDs and Nintendo Accounts that were compromised as part of the breach may have been exposed, Nintendo warns. Some accounts may have been used for fraudulent purchases, including large amounts of Fortnite’s in-game currency, V-Bucks, according to reports from affected users.

Yikes, time to create very strong passwords and app-based 2FA (if available). No excuse not to do so.

6GHz Wi-Fi can go a long way toward solving that problem. It offers not just a new swath of airwaves for routers to use, but a spacious swath that doesn’t require overlapping signals like on some current Wi-Fi channels. The new spectrum has enough room for up to seven maximum-capacity Wi-Fi streams to all be broadcast simultaneously and not interfere with each other — all without using any of the previously available spectrum.

To get a little more specific, the FCC is opening up 1,200MHz of spectrum in the 6GHz band. For the past two decades, Wi-Fi has been operating with roughly 400MHz of spectrum, and all available channels had to be split up within that limited space. Channels on the 6GHz band are expected to be 160MHz each in size. Only two channels at that size could fit inside the currently available airspace.

This is going to be a good thing in the long term.

Feldman says the new order does not suspend Penal Law § 240.35(4), which has been in existence since 1845. People trying to follow the executive order may find themselves engaging in criminal behavior. Here's Feldman:

"As of 8pm tonight, wearing a mask in public places around other people who are also wearing masks is both forbidden and required by New York law. I'm sure the police will enforce these contradictory mandates in a completely rational & nondiscriminatory fashion."

Here's the law that's still on the books while the governor is mandating mask-wearing:

"Being masked or in any manner disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration, loiters, remains or congregates in a public place with other persons so masked or disguised, or knowingly permits or aids persons so masked or disguised to congregate in a public place;  except that such conduct is not unlawful when it occurs in connection with a masquerade party or like entertainment if, when such entertainment is held in a city which has promulgated regulations in connection with such affairs, permission is first obtained from the police or other appropriate authorities…"

Yep, this is going to be a major issue in New York as Andy Cuomo's mask order conflicts with a anti-mask law that's been in place in the state since the 19th century (1845).

Watzke, a 63-year-old former projectionist, has heard of at least 11 drive-in theaters in America that are currently operating under strict public health guidelines. While that’s a small fraction of the 305 businesses known to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association, the response he’s witnessed has been strong enough to offer a glimmer of hope. “This could actually be an upslope of the industry that we haven’t had in many a year,” Watzke says. Atlas Obscura asked him how he’s nurturing his business and his community during a pandemic.

One of the good benefits of distancing that's for sure. Hope it lasts that even after this is over, the drive-in is capable of making a full recovery.

Along with Potbelly and Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, Shake Shack was one of several large restaurant companies with thousands of workers that successfully applied under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The $350 billion government-backed loan program was created to help small businesses pay staff. The federal law that established the program allowed restaurants and hotels to apply as long as they had no more than 500 employees working at a single location.

Like I said, most small businesses just got fucked over as usual thanks to our incompetent government.