Tag Archives: als

Epic Responds to Cheating Fortnite Kid’s Mom in Court

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/epic-responds-to-cheating-fortnite-kids-mom-in-court-180424/

Last fall, Epic Games released Fortnite’s free-to-play “Battle Royale” game mode, generating massive interest among gamers.

This also included thousands of cheaters, many of whom were subsequently banned. Epic Games then went a step further by taking several cheaters to court for copyright infringement.

One of the alleged cheaters turned out to be a minor, who’s referred to by his initials C.R. in the Carolina District Court. Epic Games wasn’t aware of this when it filed the lawsuit, but the kid’s mother let the company know, loud and clear.

“This company is in the process of attempting to sue a 14-year-old child,” the mother informed the Court last fall.

Among other defenses, the mother highlighted that the EULA, which the game publisher relies heavily upon in the complaint, isn’t legally binding. The EULA states that minors require permission from a parent or legal guardian, which was not the case here.

“Please note parental consent was not issued to [my son] to play this free game produced by Epic Games, INC,” the mother wrote in her letter.

After this letter, things went quiet. Epic managed to locate and serve the defendant with help from a private investigator, but no official response to the complaint was filed. This eventually prompted Epic to request an entry of default.

However, US District Court Malcolm Howard wouldn’t allow Epic to cruise to a win that easily. Instead, he ruled that the mother’s letter should be seen as a motion to dismiss the case.

“While it is true that defendant has not responded since proper service was effectuated, the letter from defendant’s mother detailing why this matter should be dismissed cannot be ignored,” Judge Howard wrote earlier this month.

As a result, Epic Games had to reply to the letter, which it did yesterday. In a redacted motion the game publisher argues that most of the mother’s arguments failed to state a claim and are therefore irrelevant.

Epic argues that the only issue that remains is the lack of parental consent when C.R. agreed to the EULA and the Terms. The mother argued that these are not valid agreements because her son is a minor, but Epic disagrees.

“This ‘infancy defense’ is not available to C.R,” Epic writes, pointing to jurisprudence where another court ruled that a minor can’t use the infancy defense to void contractual obligations while keeping the benefits of the same contract.

“C.R. affirmatively agreed to abide by Epic’s Terms and EULA, and ‘retained the benefits’ of the contracts he entered into with Epic. Accordingly, C.R. should not be able to ‘use the infancy defense to void [his] contractual obligations by retaining the benefits of the contract[s]’.”

Epic further argues that it’s clear that the cheater infringed on Epic’s copyrights and facilitated others to do the same. As such, the company asks the Court to deny the mother’s motion to dismiss.

If the Court agrees, Epic can request an entry of default. It did the same in a related case against another minor defendant earlier, which was granted by the Court late last week.

If that happens, the underage defendants risk a default judgment. This is likely to include a claim for monetary damages as well as an injunction prohibiting the minors from any copyright infringement or cheating in the future.

—

A copy of Epic Games’ redacted reply is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Tips for Success: GDPR Lessons Learned

Post Syndicated from Chad Woolf original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/tips-for-success-gdpr-lessons-learned/

Security is our top priority at AWS, and from the beginning we have built security into the fabric of our services. With the introduction of GDPR (which becomes enforceable on May 25 of 2018), privacy and data protection have become even more ingrained into our security-centered culture. Three weeks ago, well ahead of the deadline, we announced that all AWS services are compliant with GDPR, meaning you can use AWS as a data processor as a way to help solve your GDPR challenges (be sure to visit our GDPR Center for additional information).

When it comes to GDPR compliance, many customers are progressing nicely and much of the initial trepidation is gone. In my interactions with customers on this topic, a few themes have emerged as universal:

  • GDPR is important. You need to have a plan in place if you process personal data of EU data subjects, not only because it’s good governance, but because GDPR does carry significant penalties for non-compliance.
  • Solving this can be complex, potentially involving a lot of personnel and multiple tools. Your GDPR process will also likely span across disciplines – impacting people, processes, and technology.
  • Each customer is unique, and there are many methodologies around assessing your compliance with GDPR. It’s important to be aware of your own individual business attributes.

I thought it might be helpful to share some of our own lessons learned. In our experience in solving the GDPR challenge, the following were keys to our success:

  1. Get your senior leadership involved. We have a regular cadence of detailed status conversations about GDPR with our CEO, Andy Jassy. GDPR is high stakes, and the AWS leadership team knows it. If GDPR doesn’t have the attention it needs with the visibility of top management today, it’s time to escalate.
  2. Centralize the GDPR efforts. Driving all work streams centrally is key. This may sound obvious, but managing this in a distributed manner may result in duplicative effort and/or team members moving in a different direction.
  3. The most important single partner in solving GDPR is your legal team. Having non-legal people make assumptions about how to interpret GDPR for your unique environment is both risky and a potential waste of time and resources. You want to avoid analysis paralysis by getting proper legal advice, collaborating on a direction, and then moving forward with the proper urgency.
  4. Collaborate closely with tech leadership. The “process” people in your organization, the ones who already know how to approach governance problems, are typically comfortable jumping right in to GDPR. But technical teams, including data owners, have set up their software for business application. They may not even know what kind of data they are storing, processing, or transferring to other parts of the business. In the GDPR exercise they need to be aware of (or at least help facilitate) the tracking of data and data elements between systems. This isn’t a typical ask for technical teams, so be prepared to educate and to fully understand data flow.
  5. Don’t live by the established checklists. There are multiple methodologies to solving the compliance challenges of GDPR. At AWS, we ended up establishing core requirements, mapped out by data controller and data processor functions and then, in partnership with legal, decided upon a group of projects based on our known current state. Be careful about using a set methodology, tool or questionnaire to govern your efforts. These generic assessments can help educate, but letting them drive or limit your work could lead to missing something that is key to your own compliance. In this sense, a generic, “one size fits all” solution might not be helpful.
  6. Don’t be afraid to challenge prior orthodoxy. Many times we changed course based on new information. You shouldn’t be afraid to scrap an effort if you determine it’s not working. You should also not be afraid to escalate issues to senior leadership when needed. This is an executive issue.
  7. Look for ways to leverage your work beyond this compliance activity. GDPR requires serious effort, but are the results limited to GDPR compliance? Certainly not. You can use GDPR workflows as a way to ensure better governance moving forward. Privacy and security will require work for the foreseeable future, so make your governance program scalable and usable for other purposes.

One last tip that has made all the difference: think about protecting data subjects and work backwards from there. Customer focus drives us to ask, “what would customers and data subjects want and expect us to do?” Taking GDPR from a pure legal or compliance standpoint may be technically sufficient, but we believe the objectives of security and personal data protection require a more comprehensive view, and you can most effectively shape that view by starting with the individuals GDPR was meant to protect.

If you would like to find out more about our experiences, as well as how we can help you in your efforts, please reach out to us today.

-Chad Woolf

Vice President, AWS Security Assurance

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[$] The impact of page-table isolation on I/O performance

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/752587/rss

Ever since kernel page-table isolation
(PTI) was introduced as a mitigation for
the Meltdown CPU vulnerability, users have worried about how it affects the
performance of their systems. Most of that concern has been directed
toward its impact on computing performance, but I/O performance also
matters. At the 2018 Linux Storage, Filesystem, and Memory-Management
Summit, Ming Lei presented some preliminary work he has done to try to
quantify how severely PTI affects block I/O operations.

Ransomware Update: Viruses Targeting Business IT Servers

Post Syndicated from Roderick Bauer original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/ransomware-update-viruses-targeting-business-it-servers/

Ransomware warning message on computer

As ransomware attacks have grown in number in recent months, the tactics and attack vectors also have evolved. While the primary method of attack used to be to target individual computer users within organizations with phishing emails and infected attachments, we’re increasingly seeing attacks that target weaknesses in businesses’ IT infrastructure.

How Ransomware Attacks Typically Work

In our previous posts on ransomware, we described the common vehicles used by hackers to infect organizations with ransomware viruses. Most often, downloaders distribute trojan horses through malicious downloads and spam emails. The emails contain a variety of file attachments, which if opened, will download and run one of the many ransomware variants. Once a user’s computer is infected with a malicious downloader, it will retrieve additional malware, which frequently includes crypto-ransomware. After the files have been encrypted, a ransom payment is demanded of the victim in order to decrypt the files.

What’s Changed With the Latest Ransomware Attacks?

In 2016, a customized ransomware strain called SamSam began attacking the servers in primarily health care institutions. SamSam, unlike more conventional ransomware, is not delivered through downloads or phishing emails. Instead, the attackers behind SamSam use tools to identify unpatched servers running Red Hat’s JBoss enterprise products. Once the attackers have successfully gained entry into one of these servers by exploiting vulnerabilities in JBoss, they use other freely available tools and scripts to collect credentials and gather information on networked computers. Then they deploy their ransomware to encrypt files on these systems before demanding a ransom. Gaining entry to an organization through its IT center rather than its endpoints makes this approach scalable and especially unsettling.

SamSam’s methodology is to scour the Internet searching for accessible and vulnerable JBoss application servers, especially ones used by hospitals. It’s not unlike a burglar rattling doorknobs in a neighborhood to find unlocked homes. When SamSam finds an unlocked home (unpatched server), the software infiltrates the system. It is then free to spread across the company’s network by stealing passwords. As it transverses the network and systems, it encrypts files, preventing access until the victims pay the hackers a ransom, typically between $10,000 and $15,000. The low ransom amount has encouraged some victimized organizations to pay the ransom rather than incur the downtime required to wipe and reinitialize their IT systems.

The success of SamSam is due to its effectiveness rather than its sophistication. SamSam can enter and transverse a network without human intervention. Some organizations are learning too late that securing internet-facing services in their data center from attack is just as important as securing endpoints.

The typical steps in a SamSam ransomware attack are:

1
Attackers gain access to vulnerable server		 Attackers exploit vulnerable software or weak/stolen credentials.
2
Attack spreads via remote access tools		 Attackers harvest credentials, create SOCKS proxies to tunnel traffic, and abuse RDP to install SamSam on more computers in the network.
3
Ransomware payload deployed		 Attackers run batch scripts to execute ransomware on compromised machines.
4
Ransomware demand delivered requiring payment to decrypt files		 Demand amounts vary from victim to victim. Relatively low ransom amounts appear to be designed to encourage quick payment decisions.

What all the organizations successfully exploited by SamSam have in common is that they were running unpatched servers that made them vulnerable to SamSam. Some organizations had their endpoints and servers backed up, while others did not. Some of those without backups they could use to recover their systems chose to pay the ransom money.

Timeline of SamSam History and Exploits

Since its appearance in 2016, SamSam has been in the news with many successful incursions into healthcare, business, and government institutions.

March 2016
SamSam appears

SamSam campaign targets vulnerable JBoss servers
Attackers hone in on healthcare organizations specifically, as they’re more likely to have unpatched JBoss machines.

April 2016
SamSam finds new targets

SamSam begins targeting schools and government.
After initial success targeting healthcare, attackers branch out to other sectors.

April 2017
New tactics include RDP

Attackers shift to targeting organizations with exposed RDP connections, and maintain focus on healthcare.
An attack on Erie County Medical Center costs the hospital $10 million over three months of recovery.
Erie County Medical Center attacked by SamSam ransomware virus

January 2018
Municipalities attacked

• Attack on Municipality of Farmington, NM.
• Attack on Hancock Health.
Hancock Regional Hospital notice following SamSam attack
• Attack on Adams Memorial Hospital
• Attack on Allscripts (Electronic Health Records), which includes 180,000 physicians, 2,500 hospitals, and 7.2 million patients’ health records.

February 2018
Attack volume increases

• Attack on Davidson County, NC.
• Attack on Colorado Department of Transportation.
SamSam virus notification

March 2018
SamSam shuts down Atlanta

• Second attack on Colorado Department of Transportation.
• City of Atlanta suffers a devastating attack by SamSam.
The attack has far-reaching impacts — crippling the court system, keeping residents from paying their water bills, limiting vital communications like sewer infrastructure requests, and pushing the Atlanta Police Department to file paper reports.
Atlanta Ransomware outage alert
• SamSam campaign nets $325,000 in 4 weeks.
Infections spike as attackers launch new campaigns. Healthcare and government organizations are once again the primary targets.

How to Defend Against SamSam and Other Ransomware Attacks

The best way to respond to a ransomware attack is to avoid having one in the first place. If you are attacked, making sure your valuable data is backed up and unreachable by ransomware infection will ensure that your downtime and data loss will be minimal or none if you ever suffer an attack.

In our previous post, How to Recover From Ransomware, we listed the ten ways to protect your organization from ransomware.

  1. Use anti-virus and anti-malware software or other security policies to block known payloads from launching.
  2. Make frequent, comprehensive backups of all important files and isolate them from local and open networks. Cybersecurity professionals view data backup and recovery (74% in a recent survey) by far as the most effective solution to respond to a successful ransomware attack.
  3. Keep offline backups of data stored in locations inaccessible from any potentially infected computer, such as disconnected external storage drives or the cloud, which prevents them from being accessed by the ransomware.
  4. Install the latest security updates issued by software vendors of your OS and applications. Remember to patch early and patch often to close known vulnerabilities in operating systems, server software, browsers, and web plugins.
  5. Consider deploying security software to protect endpoints, email servers, and network systems from infection.
  6. Exercise cyber hygiene, such as using caution when opening email attachments and links.
  7. Segment your networks to keep critical computers isolated and to prevent the spread of malware in case of attack. Turn off unneeded network shares.
  8. Turn off admin rights for users who don’t require them. Give users the lowest system permissions they need to do their work.
  9. Restrict write permissions on file servers as much as possible.
  10. Educate yourself, your employees, and your family in best practices to keep malware out of your systems. Update everyone on the latest email phishing scams and human engineering aimed at turning victims into abettors.

Please Tell Us About Your Experiences with Ransomware

Have you endured a ransomware attack or have a strategy to avoid becoming a victim? Please tell us of your experiences in the comments.

The post Ransomware Update: Viruses Targeting Business IT Servers appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Congratulations to Oracle on MySQL 8.0

Post Syndicated from Michael "Monty" Widenius original http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2018/04/congratulations-to-oracle-on-mysql-80.html

Last week, Oracle announced the general availability of MySQL 8.0. This is good news for database users, as it means Oracle is still developing MySQL.

I decide to celebrate the event by doing a quick test of MySQL 8.0. Here follows a step-by-step description of my first experience with MySQL 8.0.
Note that I did the following without reading the release notes, as is what I have done with every MySQL / MariaDB release up to date; In this case it was not the right thing to do.

I pulled MySQL 8.0 from [email protected]:mysql/mysql-server.git
I was pleasantly surprised that ‘cmake . ; make‘ worked without without any compiler warnings! I even checked the used compiler options and noticed that MySQL was compiled with -Wall + several other warning flags. Good job MySQL team!

I did have a little trouble finding the mysqld binary as Oracle had moved it to ‘runtime_output_directory’; Unexpected, but no big thing.

Now it’s was time to install MySQL 8.0.

I did know that MySQL 8.0 has removed mysql_install_db, so I had to use the mysqld binary directly to install the default databases:
(I have specified datadir=/my/data3 in the /tmp/my.cnf file)

> cd runtime_output_directory
> mkdir /my/data3
> ./mysqld –defaults-file=/tmp/my.cnf –install

2018-04-22T12:38:18.332967Z 1 [ERROR] [MY-011011] [Server] Failed to find valid data directory.
2018-04-22T12:38:18.333109Z 0 [ERROR] [MY-010020] [Server] Data Dictionary initialization failed.
2018-04-22T12:38:18.333135Z 0 [ERROR] [MY-010119] [Server] Aborting

A quick look in mysqld –help –verbose output showed that the right command option is –-initialize. My bad, lets try again,

> ./mysqld –defaults-file=/tmp/my.cnf –initialize

2018-04-22T12:39:31.910509Z 0 [ERROR] [MY-010457] [Server] –initialize specified but the data directory has files in it. Aborting.
2018-04-22T12:39:31.910578Z 0 [ERROR] [MY-010119] [Server] Aborting

Now I used the right options, but still didn’t work.
I took a quick look around:

> ls /my/data3/
binlog.index

So even if the mysqld noticed that the data3 directory was wrong, it still wrote things into it.  This even if I didn’t have –log-binlog enabled in the my.cnf file. Strange, but easy to fix:

> rm /my/data3/binlog.index
> ./mysqld –defaults-file=/tmp/my.cnf –initialize

2018-04-22T12:40:45.633637Z 0 [ERROR] [MY-011071] [Server] unknown variable ‘max-tmp-tables=100’
2018-04-22T12:40:45.633657Z 0 [Warning] [MY-010952] [Server] The privilege system failed to initialize correctly. If you have upgraded your server, make sure you’re executing mysql_upgrade to correct the issue.
2018-04-22T12:40:45.633663Z 0 [ERROR] [MY-010119] [Server] Aborting

The warning about the privilege system confused me a bit, but I ignored it for the time being and removed from my configuration files the variables that MySQL 8.0 doesn’t support anymore. I couldn’t find a list of the removed variables anywhere so this was done with the trial and error method.

> ./mysqld –defaults-file=/tmp/my.cnf

2018-04-22T12:42:56.626583Z 0 [ERROR] [MY-010735] [Server] Can’t open the mysql.plugin table. Please run mysql_upgrade to create it.
2018-04-22T12:42:56.827685Z 0 [Warning] [MY-010015] [Repl] Gtid table is not ready to be used. Table ‘mysql.gtid_executed’ cannot be opened.
2018-04-22T12:42:56.838501Z 0 [Warning] [MY-010068] [Server] CA certificate ca.pem is self signed.
2018-04-22T12:42:56.848375Z 0 [Warning] [MY-010441] [Server] Failed to open optimizer cost constant tables
2018-04-22T12:42:56.848863Z 0 [ERROR] [MY-013129] [Server] A message intended for a client cannot be sent there as no client-session is attached. Therefore, we’re sending the information to the error-log instead: MY-001146 – Table ‘mysql.component’ doesn’t exist
2018-04-22T12:42:56.848916Z 0 [Warning] [MY-013129] [Server] A message intended for a client cannot be sent there as no client-session is attached. Therefore, we’re sending the information to the error-log instead: MY-003543 – The mysql.component table is missing or has an incorrect definition.
….
2018-04-22T12:42:56.854141Z 0 [System] [MY-010931] [Server] /home/my/mysql-8.0/runtime_output_directory/mysqld: ready for connections. Version: ‘8.0.11’ socket: ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’ port: 3306 Source distribution.

I figured out that if there is a single wrong variable in the configuration file, running mysqld –initialize will leave the database in an inconsistent state. NOT GOOD! I am happy I didn’t try this in a production system!

Time to start over from the beginning:

> rm -r /my/data3/*
> ./mysqld –defaults-file=/tmp/my.cnf –initialize

2018-04-22T12:44:45.548960Z 5 [Note] [MY-010454] [Server] A temporary password is generated for [email protected]: px)NaaSp?6um
2018-04-22T12:44:51.221751Z 0 [System] [MY-013170] [Server] /home/my/mysql-8.0/runtime_output_directory/mysqld (mysqld 8.0.11) initializing of server has completed

Success!

I wonder why the temporary password is so complex; It could easily have been something that one could easily remember without decreasing security, it’s temporary after all. No big deal, one can always paste it from the logs. (Side note: MariaDB uses socket authentication on many system and thus doesn’t need temporary installation passwords).

Now lets start the MySQL server for real to do some testing:

> ./mysqld –defaults-file=/tmp/my.cnf

2018-04-22T12:45:43.683484Z 0 [System] [MY-010931] [Server] /home/my/mysql-8.0/runtime_output_directory/mysqld: ready for connections. Version: ‘8.0.11’ socket: ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’ port: 3306 Source distribution.

And the lets start the client:

> ./client/mysql –socket=/tmp/mysql.sock –user=root –password=”px)NaaSp?6um”
ERROR 2059 (HY000): Plugin caching_sha2_password could not be loaded: /usr/local/mysql/lib/plugin/caching_sha2_password.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Apparently MySQL 8.0 doesn’t work with old MySQL / MariaDB clients by default 🙁

I was testing this in a system with MariaDB installed, like all modern Linux system today, and didn’t want to use the MySQL clients or libraries.

I decided to try to fix this by changing the authentication to the native (original) MySQL authentication method.

> mysqld –skip-grant-tables

> ./client/mysql –socket=/tmp/mysql.sock –user=root
ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user ‘root’@’localhost’ (using password: NO)

Apparently –skip-grant-tables is not good enough anymore. Let’s try again with:

> mysqld –skip-grant-tables –default_authentication_plugin=mysql_native_password

> ./client/mysql –socket=/tmp/mysql.sock –user=root mysql
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 7
Server version: 8.0.11 Source distribution

Great, we are getting somewhere, now lets fix “root”  to work with the old authenticaion:

MySQL [mysql]> update mysql.user set plugin=”mysql_native_password”,authentication_string=password(“test”) where user=”root”;
ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘(“test”) where user=”root”‘ at line 1

A quick look in the MySQL 8.0 release notes told me that the PASSWORD() function is removed in 8.0. Why???? I don’t know how one in MySQL 8.0 is supposed to generate passwords compatible with old installations of MySQL. One could of course start an old MySQL or MariaDB version, execute the password() function and copy the result.

I decided to fix this the easy way and use an empty password:

(Update:: I later discovered that the right way would have been to use: FLUSH PRIVILEGES;  ALTER USER’ root’@’localhost’ identified by ‘test’  ; I however dislike this syntax as it has the password in clear text which is easy to grab and the command can’t be used to easily update the mysql.user table. One must also disable the –skip-grant mode to do use this)

MySQL [mysql]> update mysql.user set plugin=”mysql_native_password”,authentication_string=”” where user=”root”;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.077 sec)
Rows matched: 1 Changed: 1 Warnings: 0
 
I restarted mysqld:
> mysqld –default_authentication_plugin=mysql_native_password

> ./client/mysql –user=root –password=”” mysql
ERROR 1862 (HY000): Your password has expired. To log in you must change it using a client that supports expired passwords.

Ouch, forgot that. Lets try again:

> mysqld –skip-grant-tables –default_authentication_plugin=mysql_native_password

> ./client/mysql –user=root –password=”” mysql
MySQL [mysql]> update mysql.user set password_expired=”N” where user=”root”;

Now restart and test worked:

> ./mysqld –default_authentication_plugin=mysql_native_password

>./client/mysql –user=root –password=”” mysql

Finally I had a working account that I can use to create other users!

When looking at mysqld –help –verbose again. I noticed the option:

–initialize-insecure
Create the default database and exit. Create a super user
with empty password.

I decided to check if this would have made things easier:

> rm -r /my/data3/*
> ./mysqld –defaults-file=/tmp/my.cnf –initialize-insecure

2018-04-22T13:18:06.629548Z 5 [Warning] [MY-010453] [Server] [email protected] is created with an empty password ! Please consider switching off the –initialize-insecure option.

Hm. Don’t understand the warning as–initialize-insecure is not an option that one would use more than one time and thus nothing one would ‘switch off’.

> ./mysqld –defaults-file=/tmp/my.cnf

> ./client/mysql –user=root –password=”” mysql
ERROR 2059 (HY000): Plugin caching_sha2_password could not be loaded: /usr/local/mysql/lib/plugin/caching_sha2_password.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Back to the beginning 🙁

To get things to work with old clients, one has to initialize the database with:
> ./mysqld –defaults-file=/tmp/my.cnf –initialize-insecure –default_authentication_plugin=mysql_native_password

Now I finally had MySQL 8.0 up and running and thought I would take it up for a spin by running the “standard” MySQL/MariaDB sql-bench test suite. This was removed in MySQL 5.7, but as I happened to have MariaDB 10.3 installed, I decided to run it from there.

sql-bench is a single threaded benchmark that measures the “raw” speed for some common operations. It gives you the ‘maximum’ performance for a single query. Its different from other benchmarks that measures the maximum throughput when you have a lot of users, but sql-bench still tells you a lot about what kind of performance to expect from the database.

I tried first to be clever and create the “test” database, that I needed for sql-bench, with
> mkdir /my/data3/test

but when I tried to run the benchmark, MySQL 8.0 complained that the test database didn’t exist.

MySQL 8.0 has gone away from the original concept of MySQL where the user can easily
create directories and copy databases into the database directory. This may have serious
implication for anyone doing backup of databases and/or trying to restore a backup with normal OS commands.

I created the ‘test’ database with mysqladmin and then tried to run sql-bench:

> ./run-all-tests –user=root

The first run failed in test-ATIS:

Can’t execute command ‘create table class_of_service (class_code char(2) NOT NULL,rank tinyint(2) NOT NULL,class_description char(80) NOT NULL,PRIMARY KEY (class_code))’
Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘rank tinyint(2) NOT NULL,class_description char(80) NOT NULL,PRIMARY KEY (class_’ at line 1

This happened because ‘rank‘ is now a reserved word in MySQL 8.0. This is also reserved in ANSI SQL, but I don’t know of any other database that has failed to run test-ATIS before. I have in the past run it against Oracle, PostgreSQL, Mimer, MSSQL etc without any problems.

MariaDB also has ‘rank’ as a keyword in 10.2 and 10.3 but one can still use it as an identifier.

I fixed test-ATIS and then managed to run all tests on MySQL 8.0.

I did run the test both with MySQL 8.0 and MariaDB 10.3 with the InnoDB storage engine and by having identical values for all InnoDB variables, table-definition-cache and table-open-cache. I turned off performance schema for both databases. All test are run with a user without an empty password (to keep things comparable and because it’s was too complex to generate a password in MySQL 8.0)

The result are as follows
Results per test in seconds:

Operation         |MariaDB|MySQL-8|

———————————–
ATIS              | 153.00| 228.00|
alter-table       |  92.00| 792.00|
big-tables        | 990.00|2079.00|
connect           | 186.00| 227.00|
create            | 575.00|4465.00|
insert            |4552.00|8458.00|
select            | 333.00| 412.00|
table-elimination |1900.00|3916.00|
wisconsin         | 272.00| 590.00|
———————————–

This is of course just a first view of the performance of MySQL 8.0 in a single user environment. Some reflections about the results:

  • Alter-table test is slower (as expected) in 8.0 as some of the alter tests benefits of the instant add column in MariaDB 10.3.
  • connect test is also better for MariaDB as we put a lot of efforts to speed this up in MariaDB 10.2
  • table-elimination shows an optimization in MariaDB for the  Anchor table model, which MySQL doesn’t have.
  • CREATE and DROP TABLE is almost 8 times slower in MySQL 8.0 than in MariaDB 10.3. I assume this is the cost of ‘atomic DDL’. This may also cause performance problems for any thread using the data dictionary when another thread is creating/dropping tables.
  • When looking at the individual test results, MySQL 8.0 was slower in almost every test, in many significantly slower.
  • The only test where MySQL was faster was “update_with_key_prefix”. I checked this and noticed that there was a bug in the test and the columns was updated to it’s original value (which should be instant with any storage engine). This is an old bug that MySQL has found and fixed and that we have not been aware of in the test or in MariaDB.
  • While writing this, I noticed that MySQL 8.0 is now using utf8mb4 as the default character set instead of latin1. This may affect some of the benchmarks slightly (not much as most tests works with numbers and Oracle claims that utf8mb4 is only 20% slower than latin1), but needs to be verified.
  • Oracle claims that MySQL 8.0 is much faster on multi user benchmarks. The above test indicates that they may have done this by sacrificing single user performance.
  •  We need to do more and many different benchmarks to better understand exactly what is going on. Stay tuned!

Short summary of my first run with MySQL 8.0:

  • Using the new caching_sha2_password authentication as default for new installation is likely to cause a lot of problems for users. No old application will be able to use MySQL 8.0, installed with default options, without moving to MySQL’s client libraries. While working on this blog I saw MySQL users complain on IRC that not even MySQL Worklog can authenticate with MySQL 8.0. This is the first time in MySQL’s history where such an incompatible change has ever been done!
  • Atomic DDL is a good thing (We plan to have this in MariaDB 10.4), but it should not have such a drastic impact on performance. I am also a bit skeptical of MySQL 8.0 having just one copy of the data dictionary as if this gets corrupted you will lose all your data. (Single point of failure)
  • MySQL 8.0 has several new reserved words and has removed a lot of variables, which makes upgrades hard. Before upgrading to MySQL 8.0 one has to check all one’s databases and applications to ensure that there are no conflicts.
  • As my test above shows, if you have a single deprecated variable in your configuration files, the installation of MySQL will abort and can leave the database in inconsistent state. I did of course my tests by installing into an empty data dictionary, but one can assume that some of the problems may also happen when upgrading an old installation.

Conclusions:
In many ways, MySQL 8.0 has caught up with some earlier versions of MariaDB. For instance, in MariaDB 10.0, we introduced roles (four years ago). In MariaDB 10.1, we introduced encrypted redo/undo logs (three years ago). In MariaDB 10.2, we introduced window functions and CTEs (a year ago). However, some catch-up of MariaDB Server 10.2 features still remains for MySQL (such as check constraints, binlog compression, and log-based rollback).

MySQL 8.0 has a few new interesting features (mostly Atomic DDL and JSON TABLE functions), but at the same time MySQL has strayed away from some of the fundamental corner stone principles of MySQL:

From the start of the first version of MySQL in 1995, all development has been focused around 3 core principles:

  • Ease of use
  • Performance
  • Stability

With MySQL 8.0, Oracle has sacrifices 2 of 3 of these.

In addition (as part of ease of use), while I was working on MySQL, we did our best to ensure that the following should hold:

  • Upgrades should be trivial
  • Things should be kept compatible, if possible (don’t remove features/options/functions that are used)
  • Minimize reserved words, don’t remove server variables
  • One should be able to use normal OS commands to create and drop databases, copy and move tables around within the same system or between different systems. With 8.0 and data dictionary taking backups of specific tables will be hard, even if the server is not running.
  • mysqldump should always be usable backups and to move to new releases
  • Old clients and application should be able to use ‘any’ MySQL server version unchanged. (Some Oracle client libraries, like C++, by default only supports the new X protocol and can thus not be used with older MySQL or any MariaDB version)

We plan to add a data dictionary to MariaDB 10.4 or MariaDB 10.5, but in a way to not sacrifice any of the above principles!

The competition between MySQL and MariaDB is not just about a tactical arms race on features. It’s about design philosophy, or strategic vision, if you will.

This shows in two main ways: our respective view of the Storage Engine structure, and of the top-level direction of the roadmap.

On the Storage Engine side, MySQL is converging on InnoDB, even for clustering and partitioning. In doing so, they are abandoning the advantages of multiple ways of storing data. By contrast, MariaDB sees lots of value in the Storage Engine architecture: MariaDB Server 10.3 will see the general availability of MyRocks (for write-intensive workloads) and Spider (for scalable workloads). On top of that, we have ColumnStore for analytical workloads. One can use the CONNECT engine to join with other databases. The use of different storage engines for different workloads and different hardware is a competitive differentiator, now more than ever.

On the roadmap side, MySQL is carefully steering clear of features that close the gap between MySQL and Oracle. MariaDB has no such constraints. With MariaDB 10.3, we are introducing PL/SQL compatibility (Oracle’s stored procedures) and AS OF (built-in system versioned tables with point-in-time querying). For both of those features, MariaDB is the first Open Source database doing so. I don’t except Oracle to provide any of the above features in MySQL!

Also on the roadmap side, MySQL is not working with the ecosystem in extending the functionality. In 2017, MariaDB accepted more code contributions in one year, than MySQL has done during its entire lifetime, and the rate is increasing!

I am sure that the experience I had with testing MySQL 8.0 would have been significantly better if MySQL would have an open development model where the community could easily participate in developing and testing MySQL continuously. Most of the confusing error messages and strange behavior would have been found and fixed long before the GA release.

Before upgrading to MySQL 8.0 please read https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/upgrading-from-previous-series.html to see what problems you can run into! Don’t expect that old installations or applications will work out of the box without testing as a lot of features and options has been removed (query cache, partition of myisam tables etc)! You probably also have to revise your backup methods, especially if you want to ever restore just a few tables. (With 8.0, I don’t know how this can be easily done).

According to the MySQL 8.0 release notes, one can’t use mysqldump to copy a database to MySQL 8.0. One has to first to move to a MySQL 5.7 GA version (with mysqldump, as recommended by Oracle) and then to MySQL 8.0 with in-place update. I assume this means that all old mysqldump backups are useless for MySQL 8.0?

MySQL 8.0 seams to be a one way street to an unknown future. Up to MySQL 5.7 it has been trivial to move to MariaDB and one could always move back to MySQL with mysqldump. All MySQL client libraries has worked with MariaDB and all MariaDB client libraries has worked with MySQL. With MySQL 8.0 this has changed in the wrong direction.

As long as you are using MySQL 5.7 and below you have choices for your future, after MySQL 8.0 you have very little choice. But don’t despair, as MariaDB will always be able to load a mysqldump file and it’s very easy to upgrade your old MySQL installation to MariaDB 🙂

I wish you good luck to try MySQL 8.0 (and also the upcoming MariaDB 10.3)!

[$] Filesystem metadata memory management

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/752552/rss

It is a good thing that strong coffee was served at the 2018 Linux Storage,
Filesystem, and Memory-Management Summit; full awareness was required from
the first session, in which Josef Bacik discussed some issues that have
arisen in the interaction between filesystems and the memory-management
subsystem. Filesystems cache a lot of data from files, but also a lot of
metadata about those files. It turns out, though, that management of the
cached metadata does not work as well as one might like.

Tackling climate change and helping the community

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/fair-haven-weather-station/

In today’s guest post, seventh-grade students Evan Callas, Will Ross, Tyler Fallon, and Kyle Fugate share their story of using the Raspberry Pi Oracle Weather Station in their Innovation Lab class, headed by Raspberry Pi Certified Educator Chris Aviles.

Raspberry Pi Certified Educator Chris Aviles Innovation Lab Oracle Weather Station

United Nations Sustainable Goals

The past couple of weeks in our Innovation Lab class, our teacher, Mr Aviles, has challenged us students to design a project that helps solve one of the United Nations Sustainable Goals. We chose Climate Action. Innovation Lab is a class that gives students the opportunity to learn about where the crossroads of technology, the environment, and entrepreneurship meet. Everyone takes their own paths in innovation and learns about the environment using project-based learning.

Raspberry Pi Certified Educator Chris Aviles Innovation Lab Oracle Weather Station

Raspberry Pi Oracle Weather Station

For our climate change challenge, we decided to build a Raspberry Pi Oracle Weather Station. Tackling the issues of climate change in a way that helps our community stood out to us because we knew with the help of this weather station we can send the local data to farmers and fishermen in town. Recent changes in climate have been affecting farmers’ crops. Unexpected rain, heat, and other unusual weather patterns can completely destabilize the natural growth of the plants and destroy their crops altogether. The amount of labour output needed by farmers has also significantly increased, forcing farmers to grow more food on less resources. By using our Raspberry Pi Oracle Weather Station to alert local farmers, they can be more prepared and aware of the weather, leading to better crops and safe boating.

Raspberry Pi Certified Educator Chris Aviles Innovation Lab Oracle Weather Station

Growing teamwork and coding skills

The process of setting up our weather station was fun and simple. Raspberry Pi made the instructions very easy to understand and read, which was very helpful for our team who had little experience in coding or physical computing. We enjoyed working together as a team and were happy to be growing our teamwork skills.

Once we constructed and coded the weather station, we learned that we needed to support the station with PVC pipes. After we completed these steps, we brought the weather station up to the roof of the school and began collecting data. Our information is currently being sent to the Initial State dashboard so that we can share the information with anyone interested. This information will also be recorded and seen by other schools, businesses, and others from around the world who are using the weather station. For example, we can see the weather in countries such as France, Greece and Italy.

Raspberry Pi Certified Educator Chris Aviles Innovation Lab Oracle Weather Station

Raspberry Pi allows us to build these amazing projects that help us to enjoy coding and physical computing in a fun, engaging, and impactful way. We picked climate change because we care about our community and would like to make a substantial contribution to our town, Fair Haven, New Jersey. It is not every day that kids are given these kinds of opportunities, and we are very lucky and grateful to go to a school and learn from a teacher where these opportunities are given to us. Thanks, Mr Aviles!

To see more awesome projects by Mr Avile’s class, you can keep up with him on his blog and follow him on Twitter.

The post Tackling climate change and helping the community appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Computer Alarm that Triggers When Lid Is Opened

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/04/computer_alarm_.html

“Do Not Disturb” is a Macintosh app that send an alert when the lid is opened. The idea is to detect computer tampering.

Wire article:

Do Not Disturb goes a step further than just the push notification. Using the Do Not Disturb iOS app, a notified user can send themselves a picture snapped with the laptop’s webcam to catch the perpetrator in the act, or they can shut down the computer remotely. The app can also be configured to take more custom actions like sending an email, recording screen activity, and keeping logs of commands executed on the machine.

Can someone please make one of these for Windows?

Japan ISP Says it Will Voluntarily Block Pirate Sites as Major Portal Disappears

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/japan-isp-says-it-will-voluntarily-block-pirate-sites-as-major-portal-disappears-180424/

Speaking at a news conference during March, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that the government was considering measures to prohibit access to pirate sites. The country’s manga and anime industries were treasures worth protecting, Suga said.

“The damage is getting worse. We are considering the possibilities of all measures including site blocking. I would like to take countermeasures as soon as possible under the cooperation of the relevant ministries and agencies,” he added.

But with no specific legislation that allows for site-blocking, particularly not on copyright infringement grounds, it appeared that Japan might face an uphill struggle. Indeed, the country’s constitution supports freedom of speech and expressly forbids censorship. Earlier this month, however, matters quickly began to progress.

On Friday April 13, the government said it would introduce an emergency measure to target websites hosting pirated manga, anime and other types of content. It would not force ISPs to comply with its blocking requests but would simply ask for their assistance instead.

The aim was to establish cooperation in advance of an expansion of legislation later this year which was originally introduced to tackle the menace of child pornography.

“Our country’s content industry could be denied a future if manga artists and other creators are robbed of proceeds that should go to them,” said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The government didn’t have to wait long for a response. The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) announced yesterday that it will begin blocking access to sites that provide unauthorized access to copyrighted content.

“We have taken short-term emergency measures until legal systems on site-blocking are implemented,” NTT in a statement.

NTT Communications Corp., NTT Docomo Inc. and NTT Plala Inc., will block access to three sites previously identified by the government – Mangamura, AniTube! and MioMio which have a particularly large following in Japan.

NTT said that it will also restrict access to other sites if requested to do so by the government. The company added that at least in the short-term, it will prevent access to the sites using DNS blocking.

While Anitube and MioMio will be blocked in due course, Mangamura has already disappeared from the Internet. The site was reportedly attracting 100 million visits per month but on April 17 went offline following an apparent voluntary shutdown by its administrators.

AnimeNewsNetwork notes that a news program on NHK dedicated to Mangamura aired last Wednesday. A second episode will reportedly focus on the site’s administrators which NHK claims can be traced back to the United States, Ukraine, and other regions. Whether this exposé played a part in the site’s closure is unclear but that kind of publicity is rarely welcome in the piracy scene.

To date, just three sites have been named by the government as particularly problematic but it’s now promising to set up a consultation on a further response. A bill will also be submitted to parliament to target sites that promote links to content hosted elsewhere, an activity which is not illegal under current law.

Two other major access providers in Japan, KDDI Corp. and SoftBank Corp., have told local media that their plans to block pirate sites have not yet been finalized.

“The fact that neglecting the situation of infringement of copyright etc. cannot be overlooked is recognized and it is recognized as an important problem to be addressed urgently,” Softbank said in a statement.

“However, since there is concern that blocking infringes secrecy of communications, we need careful discussion. We would like to collaborate with industry organizations involved in telecommunications and consider measures that can be taken from various viewpoints, such as laws, institutions, and operation methods.”

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Court Denies TVAddons’ Request to Dismiss U.S. Piracy Lawsuit

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/court-denies-tvaddons-request-to-dismiss-u-s-piracy-lawsuit-180423/

Last year, American satellite and broadcast provider Dish Network targeted two well-known players in the third-party Kodi add-on ecosystem.

In a complaint filed in a federal court in Texas, add-on ZemTV and the TVAddons library were accused of copyright infringement. As a result, both are facing up to $150,000 in damages for each offense.

While the case was filed in Texas, neither of the defendants live there, or even in the United States. The owner and operator of TVAddons is Adam Lackman, who resides in Montreal, Canada. ZemTV’s developer Shahjahan Durrani is even further away in London, UK.

According to the legal team of the two defendants, this limited connection to Texas is reason for the case to be dismissed. They filed a motion to dismiss in January, asking the court to drop the case.

“Lackman and Durrani have never been residents or citizens of Texas; they have never owned property in Texas; they have never voted in Texas; they have never personally visited Texas; they have never directed any business activity of any kind to anyone in Texas […] and they have never earned income in Texas,” the motion reads.

Dish saw things differently, however. The broadcast provider replied to the motion, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence documenting TVAddons and ZemTV’s ties to the United States.

Among other things, Dish pointed the court towards TVAddons own data, which showed that most of its users came from the United States. More than one-third of the total user base were American, it argued.

“The United States was Defendants’ largest market with approximately 34% of all TV Addons traffic coming from users located in the United States, which was three times the traffic from the second largest market.”

Late last week District Court Judge Vanessa Gilmore ruled on the motion to dismiss from both defendants, which is denied.

Denied

At the time of writing, there is no additional information available as to how Judge Gilmore reached her decision. However, it is clear that the case will now move forward.

This lawsuit is one of several related to Kodi-powered pirate steaming boxes. While TVAddons and ZemTV didn’t sell any fully loaded boxes directly, Dish argues that they both played a significant role in making copyright-infringing content available.

Earlier this year, the manufacturer of the streaming device DragonBox was sued in a separate case by Netflix, Amazon and several major Hollywood studios.

A few days ago Dragon Media denied all piracy allegations in the complaint, but the lawsuit remains ongoing. The same is true for a related case against Tickbox, another Kodi-powered box manufacturer.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Announcing the new AWS Certified Security – Specialty exam

Post Syndicated from Janna Pellegrino original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/announcing-the-new-aws-certified-security-specialty-exam/

Good news for cloud security experts: following our most popular beta exam ever, the AWS Certified Security – Specialty exam is here. This new exam allows experienced cloud security professionals to demonstrate and validate their knowledge of how to secure the AWS platform.

About the exam
The security exam covers incident response, logging and monitoring, infrastructure security, identity and access management, and data protection. The exam is open to anyone who currently holds a Cloud Practitioner or Associate-level certification. We recommend candidates have five years of IT security experience designing and implementing security solutions, and at least two years of hands-on experience securing AWS workloads.

The exam validates:

  • An understanding of specialized data classifications and AWS data protection mechanisms.
  • An understanding of data encryption methods and AWS mechanisms to implement them.
  • An understanding of secure Internet protocols and AWS mechanisms to implement them.
  • A working knowledge of AWS security services and features of services to provide a secure production environment.
  • Competency gained from two or more years of production deployment experience using AWS security services and features.
  • Ability to make trade-off decisions with regard to cost, security, and deployment complexity given a set of application requirements.
  • An understanding of security operations and risk.

Learn more and register >>

How to prepare
We have training and other resources to help you prepare for the exam:

AWS Training (aws.amazon.com/training)

Additional Resources

Learn more and register >>

Please contact us if you have questions about exam registration.

Good luck!

Announcing the new AWS Certified Security – Specialty exam

Post Syndicated from Ozlem Yilmaz original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/announcing-the-new-aws-certified-security-specialty-exam/

Good news for cloud security experts: the AWS Certified Security — Specialty exam is here. This new exam allows experienced cloud security professionals to demonstrate and validate their knowledge of how to secure the AWS platform.

About the exam

The security exam covers incident response, logging and monitoring, infrastructure security, identity and access management, and data protection. The exam is open to anyone who currently holds a Cloud Practitioner or Associate-level certification. We recommend candidates have five years of IT security experience designing and implementing security solutions, and at least two years of hands-on experience securing AWS workloads.

The exam validates your understanding of:

  • Specialized data classifications and AWS data protection mechanisms
  • Data encryption methods and AWS mechanisms to implement them
  • Secure Internet protocols and AWS mechanisms to implement them
  • AWS security services and features of services to provide a secure production environment
  • Making tradeoff decisions with regard to cost, security, and deployment complexity given a set of application requirements
  • Security operations and risk

How to prepare

We have training and other resources to help you prepare for the exam.

AWS Training that includes:

Additional Resources

Learn more and register here, and please contact us if you have questions about exam registration.

Want more AWS Security news? Follow us on Twitter.

StaCoAn – Mobile App Static Analysis Tool

Post Syndicated from Darknet original https://www.darknet.org.uk/2018/04/stacoan-mobile-app-static-analysis-tool/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=darknetfeed

StaCoAn – Mobile App Static Analysis Tool

StaCoAn is a cross-platform tool which aids developers, bug bounty hunters and ethical hackers performing mobile app static analysis on the code of the application for both native Android and iOS applications.

This tool will look for interesting lines in the code which can contain:

  • Hardcoded credentials
  • API keys
  • URL’s of API’s
  • Decryption keys
  • Major coding mistakes

This tool was created with a big focus on usability and graphical guidance in the user interface.

Read the rest of StaCoAn – Mobile App Static Analysis Tool now! Only available at Darknet.

French Minister of Culture Calls For Pirate Streaming Blacklist

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/french-minister-of-culture-calls-for-pirate-streaming-blacklist-180423/

Nearly a decade ago, France was on the anti-piracy enforcement frontline.

The country was the first to introduce a graduated response system, Hadopi, where Internet subscribers risked losing their Internet connections if they were caught sharing torrents repeatedly.

Today this approach is no longer as effective as it once was. The bulk of all online piracy has moved from P2P downloading to streaming, and the latter isn’t traceable by anti-piracy watchdogs.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the French Government, Minister of Culture Françoise Nyssen in particular, who highlighted the issue to reporters a few days ago.

“The Hadopi response is no longer suitable because piracy is now 80% by streaming,” she said, quoted by local media.

While Hadopi may have outgrown its usefulness, France is not giving up the piracy fight. On the contrary, the country is now pondering new measures to target the current epidemic of pirate streaming sites.

Nyssen hopes that local authorities will implement a national pirate site blocklist to address the problem. Ideally, this should be constantly updated to ensure that pirate streaming sites remain inaccessible.

The Minister told reporters that France must “act on the sites,” by implementing “a blacklist which is constantly updated to keep them offline”.

This list would be maintained by the Hadopi agency which can then circulate it among several online intermediaries. This can include Internet providers, but also search engines and advertising networks.

The tough language will be music to the ears of the film industry and the timing doesn’t appear to be a total coincidence either.

The comments from the French Minister of Culture come shortly after several film industry groups boycotted a reception at the ministry. According to the groups, France dropped the ball on enforcement against piracy, which is blamed for more than a billion euros in losses.

The renewed promise may calm the waters for a while, but for now, it’s little more than that. It will likely take time before an effective pirate site blacklist is established, if it gets that far.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Invent new sounds with Google’s NSynth Super

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/google-nsynth-super/

Discover new sounds and explore the role of machine learning in music production and sound research with the NSynth Super, an ongoing project from Google’s Magenta research team that you can build at home.

Google Open NSynth Super Testing

Uploaded by AB Open on 2018-04-17.

What is the NSynth Super?

Part of the ongoing Magenta research project within Google, NSynth Super explores the ways in which machine learning tools help artists and musicians be creative.

Google Nsynth Super Raspberry Pi

“Technology has always played a role in creating new types of sounds that inspire musicians — from the sounds of distortion to the electronic sounds of synths,” explains the team behind the NSynth Super. “Today, advances in machine learning and neural networks have opened up new possibilities for sound generation.”

Using TensorFlow, the Magenta team builds tools and interfaces that let  artists and musicians use machine learning in their work. The NSynth Super AI algorithm uses deep neural networking to investigate the character of sounds. It then builds new sounds based on these characteristics instead of simply mixing sounds together.

Using an autoencoder, it extracts 16 defining temporal features from each input. These features are then interpolated linearly to create new embeddings (mathematical representations of each sound). These new embeddings are then decoded into new sounds, which have the acoustic qualities of both inputs.

The team publishes all hardware designs and software that are part of their ongoing research under open-source licences, allowing you to build your own synth.

Build your own NSynth Super

Using these open-source tools, Andrew Black has produced his own NSynth Super, demoed in the video above. Andrew’s list of build materials includes a Raspberry Pi 3, potentiometers, rotary encoders, and the Adafruit 1.3″ OLED display. Magenta also provides Gerber files for you to fabricate your own PCB.

Google Nsynth Super Raspberry Pi

Once fabricated, the PCB includes a table of contents for adding components.

The build isn’t easy — it requires soldering skills or access to someone who can assemble PCBs. Take a look at Andrew’s blog post and the official NSynth GitHub repo to see whether you’re up to the challenge.

Google Nsynth Super Raspberry Pi
Google Nsynth Super Raspberry Pi
Google Nsynth Super Raspberry Pi

Music and Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi has been widely used for music production and music builds. Be it retrofitting a boombox, distributing music atop Table Mountain, or coding tracks with Sonic Pi, the Pi offers endless opportunities for musicians and music lovers to expand their repertoire of builds and instruments.

If you’d like to try more music-based projects using the Raspberry Pi, you can check out our free resources. And if you’ve used a Raspberry Pi in your own musical project, please share it with us in the comments or via our social network accounts.

The post Invent new sounds with Google’s NSynth Super appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Registrars Suspend 11 Pirate Site Domains, 89 More in the Crosshairs

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/registrars-suspend-11-pirate-site-domains-89-more-in-the-crosshairs-180423/

In addition to website blocking which is running rampant across dozens of countries right now, targeting the domains of pirate sites is considered to be a somewhat effective anti-piracy tool.

The vast majority of websites are found using a recognizable name so when they become inaccessible, site operators have to work quickly to get the message out to fans. That can mean losing visitors, at least in the short term, and also contributes to the rise of copy-cat sites that may not have users’ best interests at heart.

Nevertheless, crime-fighting has always been about disrupting the ability of the enemy to do business so with this in mind, authorities in India began taking advice from the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) a couple of years ago.

After studying the model developed by PIPCU, India formed its Digital Crime Unit (DCU), which follows a multi-stage plan.

Initially, pirate sites and their partners are told to cease-and-desist. Next, complaints are filed with advertisers, who are asked to stop funding site activities. Service providers and domain registrars also receive a written complaint from the DCU, asking them to suspend services to the sites in question.

Last July, the DCU earmarked around 9,000 sites where pirated content was being made available. From there, 1,300 were placed on a shortlist for targeted action. Precisely how many have been contacted thus far is unclear but authorities are now reporting success.

According to local reports, the Maharashtra government’s Digital Crime Unit has managed to have 11 pirate site domains suspended following complaints from players in the entertainment industry.

As is often the case (and to avoid them receiving even more attention) the sites in question aren’t being named but according to Brijesh Singh, special Inspector General of Police in Maharashtra, the sites had a significant number of visitors.

Their domain registrars were sent a notice under Section 149 of the Code Of Criminal Procedure, which grants police the power to take preventative action when a crime is suspected. It’s yet to be confirmed officially but it seems likely that pirate sites utilizing local registrars were targeted by the authorities.

“Responding to our notice, the domain names of all these websites, that had a collective viewership of over 80 million, were suspended,” Singh said.

Laxman Kamble, a police inspector attached to the state government’s Cyber Cell, said the pilot project was launched after the government received complaints from Viacom and Star but back in January there were reports that the MPAA had also become involved.

Using the model pioneered by London’s PIPCU, 19 parameters were applied to list of pirate sites in order to place them on the shortlist. They are reported to include the type of content being uploaded, downloaded, and the number of downloads overall.

Kamble reports that a further 89 websites, that have domains registered abroad but are very popular in India, are now being targeted. Whether overseas registrars will prove as compliant will remain to be seen. After booking initial success, even PIPCU itself experienced problems keeping up the momentum with registrars.

In 2014, information obtained by TorrentFreak following a Freedom of Information request revealed that only five out of 70 domain registrars had complied with police requests to suspend domains.

A year later, PIPCU confirmed that suspending pirate domain names was no longer a priority for them after ICANN ruled that registrars don’t have to suspend domain names without a valid court order.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.