Tag Archives: Rime

Google Signs Agreement to Tackle YouTube Piracy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/google-signs-unprecedented-agreement-to-tackle-youtube-piracy-170921/

Once upon a time, people complaining about piracy would point to the hundreds of piracy sites around the Internet. These days, criticism is just as likely to be leveled at Google-owned services.

YouTube, in particular, has come in for intense criticism, with the music industry complaining of exploitation of the DMCA in order to obtain unfair streaming rates from record labels. Along with streaming-ripping, this so-called Value Gap is one of the industry’s hottest topics.

With rightsholders seemingly at war with Google to varying degrees, news from France suggests that progress can be made if people sit down and negotiate.

According to local reports, Google and local anti-piracy outfit ALPA (l’Association de Lutte Contre la Piraterie Audiovisuelle) under the auspices of the CNC have signed an agreement to grant rightsholders direct access to content takedown mechanisms on YouTube.

YouTube has granted access to its Content ID systems to companies elsewhere for years but the new deal will see the system utilized by French content owners for the first time. It’s hoped that the access will result in infringing content being taken down or monetized more quickly than before.

“We do not want fraudsters to use our platforms to the detriment of creators,” said Carlo D’Asaro Biondo, Google’s President of Strategic Relationships in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The agreement, overseen by the Ministry of Culture, will see Google provide ALPA with financial support and rightsholders with essential training.

ALPA president Nicolas Seydoux welcomed the deal, noting that it symbolizes the “collapse of the wall of incomprehension” that previously existed between France’s rightsholders and the Internet search giant.

The deal forms part of the French government’s “Plan of Action Against Piracy”, in which it hopes to crack down on infringement in various ways, including tackling the threat of pirate sites, better promotion of services offering legitimate content, and educating children “from an early age” on the need to respect copyright.

“The fight against piracy is the great challenge of the new century in the cultural sphere,” said France’s Minister of Culture, Françoise Nyssen.

“I hope this is just the beginning of a process. It will require other agreements with rights holders and other platforms, as well as at the European level.”

According to NextInpact, the Google agreement will eventually encompass the downgrading of infringing content in search results as part of the Trusted Copyright Removal Program. A similar system is already in place in the UK.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Astro Pi upgrades on the International Space Station

Post Syndicated from David Honess original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/astro-pi-upgrades/

In 2015, The Raspberry Pi Foundation built two space-hardened Raspberry Pi units, or Astro Pis, to run student code on board the International Space Station (ISS).

Astro Pi

A space-hardened Raspberry Pi

Astro Pi upgrades

Each school year we run an Astro Pi challenge to find the next generation of space scientists to program them. After the students have their code run in space, any output files are downloaded to ground and returned to them for analysis.

That download process was originally accomplished by an astronaut shutting down the Astro Pi, moving its micro SD card to a crew laptop and copying over the files manually. This used about 20 minutes of precious crew time.

space pi – Create, Discover and Share Awesome GIFs on Gfycat

Watch space pi GIF by sooperdave on Gfycat. Discover more GIFS online on Gfycat

Last year, we passed the qualification to allow the Astro Pi computers to be connected to the Local Area Network (LAN) on board the ISS. This allows us to remotely access them from the ground, upload student code and download the results without having to involve the crew.

This year, we have been preparing a new payload to upgrade the operational capabilities of the Astro Pi units.

The payload consists of the following items:

  • 2 × USB WiFi dongles
  • 5 × optical filters
  • 4 × 32GB micro SD cards

Before anyone asks – no, we’re not going outside into the vacuum of space!

USB WiFi dongle

Currently both Astro Pi units are located in the European Columbus module. They’re even visible on Google Street View (pan down and right)! You can see that we’ve created a bit of a bird’s nest of wires behind them.

Astro Pi

The D-Link DWA-171

The decision to add WiFi capability is partly to clean up the cabling situation, but mainly so that the Astro Pi units can be deployed in ISS locations other than the Columbus module, where we won’t have access to an Ethernet switch.

The Raspberry Pi used in the Astro Pi flight units is the B+ (released in 2014), which does not have any built in wireless connectivity, so we need to use a USB dongle. This particular D-Link dongle was recommended by the European Space Agency (ESA) because a number of other payloads are already using it.

Astro Pi

An Astro Pi unit with WiFi dongle installed

Plans have been made for one of the Astro Pi units to be deployed on an Earth-facing window, to allow Earth-observation student experiments. This is where WiFi connectivity will be required to maintain LAN access for ground control.

Optical filters

With Earth-observation experiments in mind, we are also sending some flexible film optical filters. These are made from the same material as the blue square which is shipped with the Pi NoIR camera module, as noted in this post from when the product was launched. You can find the data sheet here.

Astro Pi

Rosco Roscalux #2007 Storaro Blue

To permit the filter to be easily attached to the Astro Pi unit, the film is laser-cut to friction-fit onto the 12 inner heatsink pins on the base, so that the camera aperture is covered.

Astro Pi

Laser cutting at Makespace

The laser-cutting work was done right here in Cambridge at Makespace by our own Alex Bate, and local artist Diana Probst.

Astro Pi

An Astro Pi with the optical filter installed

32GB micro SD cards

A consequence of running Earth observation experiments is a dramatic increase in the amount of disk space needed. To avoid a high frequency of commanding windows to download imagery to ground, we’re also flying some larger 32GB micro SD cards to replace the current 8GB cards.

Astro Pi

The Samsung Evo MB-MP32DA/EU

This particular type of micro SD card is X-ray proof, waterproof, and resistant to magnetism and heat. Operationally speaking there is no difference, other than the additional available disk space.

Astro Pi

An Astro Pi unit with the new micro SD card installed

The micro SD cards will be flown with a security-hardened version of Raspbian pre-installed.

Crew activities

We have several crew activities planned for when this payload arrives on the ISS. These include the installation of the upgrade items on both Astro Pi units; moving one of the units from Columbus to an earth-facing window (possibly in Node 2); and then moving it back a few weeks later.

Currently it is expected that these activities will be carried out by German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst who launches to the ISS in November (and will also be the ISS commander for Expedition 57).

Payload launch

We are targeting a January 2018 launch date for the payload. The exact launch vehicle is yet to be determined, but it could be SpaceX CRS 14. We will update you closer to the time.

Questions?

If you have any questions about this payload, how an item works, or why that specific model was chosen, please post them in the comments below, and we’ll try to answer them.

The post Astro Pi upgrades on the International Space Station appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

A Million ‘Pirate’ Boxes Sold in the UK During The Last Two Years

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/a-million-pirate-boxes-sold-in-the-uk-during-the-last-two-years-170919/

With the devices hitting the headlines on an almost weekly basis, it probably comes as no surprise that ‘pirate’ set-top boxes are quickly becoming public enemy number one with video rightsholders.

Typically loaded with the legal Kodi software but augmented with third-party addons, these often Android-based pieces of hardware drag piracy out of the realm of the computer savvy and into the living rooms of millions.

One of the countries reportedly most affected by this boom is the UK. The consumption of these devices among the general public is said to have reached epidemic proportions, and anecdotal evidence suggests that terms like Kodi and Showbox are now household terms.

Today we have another report to digest, this time from the Federation Against Copyright Theft, or FACT as they’re often known. Titled ‘Cracking Down on Digital Piracy,’ the report provides a general overview of the piracy scene, tackling well-worn topics such as how release groups and site operators work, among others.

The report is produced by FACT after consultation with the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, Intellectual Property Office, Police Scotland, and anti-piracy outfit Entura International. It begins by noting that the vast majority of the British public aren’t involved in the consumption of infringing content.

“The most recent stats show that 75% of Brits who look at content online abide by the law and don’t download or stream it illegally – up from 70% in 2013. However, that still leaves 25% who do access material illegally,” the report reads.

The report quickly heads to the topic of ‘pirate’ set-top boxes which is unsurprising, not least due to FACT’s current focus as a business entity.

While it often positions itself alongside government bodies (which no doubt boosts its status with the general public), FACT is a private limited company serving The Premier League, another company desperate to stamp out the use of infringing devices.

Nevertheless, it’s difficult to argue with some of the figures cited in the report.

“At a conservative estimate, we believe a million set-top boxes with software added
to them to facilitate illegal downloads have been sold in the UK in the last couple
of years,” the Intellectual Property Office reveals.

Interestingly, given a growing tech-savvy public, FACT’s report notes that ready-configured boxes are increasingly coming into the country.

“Historically, individuals and organized gangs have added illegal apps and add-ons onto the boxes once they have been imported, to allow illegal access to premium channels. However more recently, more boxes are coming into the UK complete with illegal access to copyrighted content via apps and add-ons already installed,” FACT notes.

“Boxes are often stored in ‘fulfillment houses’ along with other illegal electrical items and sold on social media. The boxes are either sold as one-off purchases, or with a monthly subscription to access paid-for channels.”

While FACT press releases regularly blur the lines when people are prosecuted for supplying set-top boxes in general, it’s important to note that there are essentially two kinds of products on offer to the public.

The first relies on Kodi-type devices which provide on-going free access to infringing content. The second involves premium IPTV subscriptions which are a whole different level of criminality. Separating the two when reading news reports can be extremely difficult, but it’s a hugely important to recognize the difference when assessing the kinds of sentences set-top box suppliers are receiving in the UK.

Nevertheless, FACT correctly highlights that the supply of both kinds of product are on the increase, with various parties recognizing the commercial opportunities.

“A significant number of home-grown British criminals are now involved in this type of crime. Some of them import the boxes wholesale through entirely legal channels, and modify them with illegal software at home. Others work with sophisticated criminal networks across Europe to bring the boxes into the UK.

“They then sell these boxes online, for example through eBay or Facebook, sometimes managing to sell hundreds or thousands of boxes before being caught,” the company adds.

The report notes that in some cases the sale of infringing set-top boxes occurs through cottage industry, with suppliers often working on their own or with small groups of friends and family. Invetiably, perhaps, larger scale operations are reported to be part of networks with connections to other kinds of crime, such as dealing in drugs.

“In contrast to drugs, streaming devices provide a relatively steady and predictable revenue stream for these criminals – while still being lucrative, often generating hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, they are seen as a lower risk activity with less likelihood of leading to arrest or imprisonment,” FACT reports.

While there’s certainly the potential to earn large sums from ‘pirate’ boxes and premium IPTV services, operating on the “hundreds of thousands of pounds a year” scale in the UK would attract a lot of unwanted attention. That’s not saying that it isn’t already, however.

Noting that digital piracy has evolved hugely over the past three or four years, the report says that the cases investigated so far are just the “tip of the iceberg” and that many other cases are in the early stages and will only become known to the public in the months and years ahead.

Indeed, the Intellectual Property Office hints that some kind of large-scale enforcement action may be on the horizon.

“We have identified a significant criminal business model which we have discussed and shared with key law enforcement partners. I can’t go into detail on this, but as investigations take their course, you will see the scale,” an IPO spokesperson reveals.

While details are necessarily scarce, a source familiar with this area told TF that he would be very surprised if the targets aren’t the growing handful of commercial UK-based IPTV re-sellers who offer full subscription TV services for a few pounds per month.

“They’re brazen. Watch this space,” he said.

FACT’s full report, Cracking Down on Digital Piracy, can be downloaded here (pdf)

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Inside the MPAA, Netflix & Amazon Global Anti-Piracy Alliance

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/inside-the-mpaa-netflix-amazon-global-anti-piracy-alliance-170918/

The idea of collaboration in the anti-piracy arena isn’t new but an announcement this summer heralded what is destined to become the largest project the entertainment industry has ever seen.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is a coalition of 30 companies that reads like a who’s who of the global entertainment market. In alphabetical order its members are:

Amazon, AMC Networks, BBC Worldwide, Bell Canada and Bell Media, Canal+ Group, CBS Corporation, Constantin Film, Foxtel, Grupo Globo, HBO, Hulu, Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Millennium Media, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, SF Studios, Sky, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Star India, Studio Babelsberg, STX Entertainment, Telemundo, Televisa, Twentieth Century Fox, Univision Communications Inc., Village Roadshow, The Walt Disney Company, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

The aim of the project is clear. Instead of each company considering its anti-piracy operations as a distinct island, ACE will bring them all together while presenting a united front to decision and lawmakers. At the core of the Alliance will be the MPAA.

“ACE, with its broad coalition of creators from around the world, is designed, specifically, to leverage the best possible resources to reduce piracy,”
outgoing MPAA chief Chris Dodd said in June.

“For decades, the MPAA has been the gold standard for antipiracy enforcement. We are proud to provide the MPAA’s worldwide antipiracy resources and the deep expertise of our antipiracy unit to support ACE and all its initiatives.”

Since then, ACE and its members have been silent on the project. Today, however, TorrentFreak can pull back the curtain, revealing how the agreement between the companies will play out, who will be in control, and how much the scheme will cost.

Power structure: Founding Members & Executive Committee Members

Netflix, Inc., Amazon Studios LLC, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios LLC, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, are the ‘Founding Members’ (Governing Board) of ACE.

These companies are granted full voting rights on ACE business, including the approval of initiatives and public policy, anti-piracy strategy, budget-related matters, plus approval of legal action. Not least, they’ll have the power to admit or expel ACE members.

All actions taken by the Governing Board (never to exceed nine members) need to be approved by consensus, with each Founding Member able to vote for or against decisions. Members are also allowed to abstain but one persistent objection will be enough to stop any matter being approved.

The second tier – ‘Executive Committee Members’ – is comprised of all the other companies in the ACE project (as listed above, minus the Governing Board). These companies will not be allowed to vote on ACE initiatives but can present ideas and strategies. They’ll also be allowed to suggest targets for law enforcement action while utilizing the MPAA’s anti-piracy resources.

Rights of all members

While all members of ACE can utilize the alliance’s resources, none are barred from simultaneously ‘going it alone’ on separate anti-piracy initiatives. None of these strategies and actions need approval from the Founding Members, provided they’re carried out in a company’s own name and at its own expense.

Information obtained by TorrentFreak indicates that the MPAA also reserves the right to carry out anti-piracy actions in its own name or on behalf of its member studios. The pattern here is different, since the MPAA’s global anti-piracy resources are the same resources being made available to the ACE alliance and for which members have paid to share.

Expansion of ACE

While ACE membership is already broad, the alliance is prepared to take on additional members, providing certain criteria are met. Crucially, any prospective additions must be owners or producers of movies and/or TV shows. The Governing Board will then vet applicants to ensure that they meet the criteria for acceptance as a new Executive Committee Members.

ACE Operations

The nine Governing Board members will meet at least four times a year, with each nominating a senior executive to serve as its representative. The MPAA’s General Counsel will take up the position of non-voting member of the Governing Board and will chair its meetings.

Matters to be discussed include formulating and developing the alliance’s ‘Global Anti-Piracy Action Plan’ and approving and developing the budget. ACE will also form an Anti-Piracy Working Group, which is scheduled to meet at least once a month.

On a daily basis, the MPAA and its staff will attend to the business of the ACE alliance. The MPAA will carry out its own work too but when presenting to outside third parties, it will clearly state which “hat” it is currently wearing.

Much deliberation has taken place over who should be the official spokesperson for ACE. Documents obtained by TF suggest that the MPAA planned to hire a consulting firm to find a person for the role, seeking a professional with international experience who had never been previously been connected with the MPAA.

They appear to have settled on Zoe Thorogood, who previously worked for British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Money, money, money

Of course, the ACE program isn’t going to fund itself, so all members are required to contribute to the operation. The MPAA has opened a dedicated bank account under its control specifically for the purpose, with members contributing depending on status.

Founding/Governing Board Members will be required to commit $5m each annually. However, none of the studios that are MPAA members will have to hand over any cash, since they already fund the MPAA, whose anti-piracy resources ACE is built.

“Each Governing Board Member will contribute annual dues in an amount equal to $5 million USD. Payment of dues shall be made bi-annually in equal shares, payable at
the beginning of each six (6) month period,” the ACE agreement reads.

“The contribution of MPAA personnel, assets and resources…will constitute and be considered as full payment of each MPAA Member Studio’s Governing Board dues.”

That leaves just Netflix and Amazon paying the full amount of $5m in cash each.

From each company’s contribution, $1m will be paid into legal trust accounts allocated to each Governing Board member. If ACE-agreed litigation and legal expenses exceed that amount for the year, members will be required to top up their accounts to cover their share of the costs.

For the remaining 21 companies on the Executive Committee, annual dues are $200,000 each, to be paid in one installment at the start of the financial year – $4.2m all in. Of all dues paid by all members from both tiers, half will be used to boost anti-piracy resources, over and above what the MPAA will spend on the same during 2017.

“Fifty percent (50%) of all dues received from Global Alliance Members other than
the MPAA Member Studios…shall, as agreed by the Governing Board, be used (a) to increase the resources spent on online antipiracy over and above….the amount of MPAA’s 2017 Content Protection Department budget for online antipiracy initiatives/operations,” an internal ACE document reads.

Intellectual property

As the project moves forward, the Alliance expects to gain certain knowledge and experience. On the back of that, the MPAA hopes to grow its intellectual property portfolio.

“Absent written agreement providing otherwise, any and all data, intellectual property, copyrights, trademarks, or know-how owned and/or contributed to the Global Alliance by MPAA, or developed or created by the MPAA or the Global Alliance during the Term of this Charter, shall remain and/or become the exclusive property of the MPAA,” the ACE agreement reads.

That being said, all Governing Board Members will also be granted “perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive licenses” to use the same under certain rules, even in the event they leave the ACE initiative.

Terms and extensions

Any member may withdraw from the Alliance at any point, but there will be no refunds. Additionally, any financial commitment previously made to litigation will have to be honored by the member.

The ACE agreement has an initial term of two years but Governing Board Members will meet not less than three months before it is due to expire to vote on any extension.

To be continued……

With the internal structure of ACE now revealed, all that remains is to discover the contents of the initiative’s ‘Global Anti-Piracy Action Plan’. To date, that document has proven elusive but with an operation of such magnitude, future leaks are a distinct possibility.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Kodi ‘Trademark Troll’ Has Interesting Views on Co-Opting Other People’s Work

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/kodi-trademark-troll-has-interesting-views-on-co-opting-other-peoples-work-170917/

The Kodi team, operating under the XBMC Foundation, announced last week that a third-party had registered the Kodi trademark in Canada and was using it for their own purposes.

That person was Geoff Gavora, who had previously been in communication with the Kodi team, expressing how important the software was to his sales.

“We had hoped, given the positive nature of his past emails, that perhaps he was doing this for the benefit of the Foundation. We learned, unfortunately, that this was not the case,” XBMC Foundation President Nathan Betzen said.

According to the Kodi team, Gavora began delisting Amazon ads placed by companies selling Kodi-enabled products, based on infringement of Gavora’s trademark rights.

“[O]nly Gavora’s hardware can be sold, unless those companies pay him a fee to stay on the store,” Betzen explained.

Predictably, Gavora’s move is being viewed as highly controversial, not least since he’s effectively claiming licensing rights in Canada over what should be a free and open source piece of software. TF obtained one of the notices Amazon sent to a seller of a Kodi-enabled device in Canada, following a complaint from Gavora.

Take down Kodi from Amazon, or pay Gavora

So who is Geoff Gavora and what makes him tick? Thanks to a 2016 interview with Ali Salman of the Rapid Growth Podcast, we have a lot of information from the horse’s mouth.

It all began in 2011, when Gavora began jailbreaking Apple TVs, loading them with XBMC, and selling them to friends.

“I did it as a joke, for beer money from my friends,” Gavora told Salman.

“I’d do it for $25 to $50 and word of mouth spread that I was doing this so we could load on this media center to watch content and online streams from it.”

Intro to the interview with Ali Salman

Soon, however, word of mouth caused the business to grow wings, Gavora claims.

“So they started telling people and I start telling people it’s $50, and then I got so busy so I start telling people it’s $75. I’m getting too busy with my work and with this. And it got to the point where I was making more jailbreaking these Apple TVs than I was at my career, and I wasn’t very happy at my career at that time.”

Jailbreaking was supposed to be a side thing to tide Gavora over until another job came along, but he had a problem – he didn’t come from a technical background. Nevertheless, what Gavora did have was a background in marketing and with a decent knowledge of how to succeed in customer service, he majored on that front.

Gavora had come to learn that while people wanted his devices, they weren’t very good at operating XBMC (Kodi’s former name) which he’d loaded onto them. With this in mind, he began offering web support and phone support via a toll-free line.

“I started receiving calls from New York, Dallas, and then Australia, Hong Kong. Everyone around the world was calling me and saying ‘we hear there’s some kid in Calgary, some young child, who’s offering tech support for the Apple TV’,” Gavora said.

But with things apparently going well, a wrench was soon thrown into the works when Apple released the third variant of its Apple TV and Gavorra was unable to jailbreak it. This prompted him to market his own Linux-based set-top device and his business, Raw-Media, grew from there.

While it seems likely that so-called ‘Raw Boxes’ were doing reasonably well with consumers, what was the secret of their success? Podcast host Salman asked Gavora for his ‘networking party 10-second pitch’, and the Canadian was happy to oblige.

“I get this all the time actually. I basically tell people that I sell a box that gives them free TV and movies,” he said.

This was met with laughter from the host, to which Gavora added, “That’s sort of the three-second pitch and everyone’s like ‘Oh, tell me more’.”

“Who doesn’t like free TV, come on?” Salman responded. “Yeah exactly,” Gavora said.

The image below, taken from a January 2016 YouTube unboxing video, shows one of the products sold by Gavora’s company.

Raw-Media Kodi Box packaging (note Kodi logo)

Bearing in mind the offer of free movies and TV, the tagline on the box, “Stop paying for things you don’t want to watch, watch more free tv!” initially looks quite provocative. That being said, both the device and Kodi are perfectly capable of playing plenty of legal content from free sources, so there’s no problem there.

What is surprising, however, is that the unboxing video shows the device being booted up, apparently already loaded with infamous third-party Kodi addons including PrimeWire, Genesis, Icefilms, and Navi-X.

The unboxing video showing the Kodi setup

Given that Gavora has registered the Kodi trademark in Canada and prints the official logo on his packaging, this runs counter to the official Kodi team’s aggressive stance towards boxes ready-configured with what they categorize as banned addons. Matters are compounded when one visits the product support site.

As seen in the image below, Raw-Media devices are delivered with a printed card in the packaging informing people where to get the after-sales services Gavora says he built his business upon. The cards advise people to visit No-Issue.ca, a site setup to offer text and video-based support to set-top box buyers.

No-Issue.ca (which is hosted on the same server as raw-media.ca and claimed officially as a sister site here) now redirects to No-Issue.is, as per a 2016 announcement. It has a fairly bland forum but the connected tutorial videos, found on No Issue’s YouTube channel, offer a lot more spice.

Registered under Gavora’s online nickname Gombeek (which is also used on the official Kodi forums), the channel is full of videos detailing how to install and use a wide range of addons.

The No-issue YouTube Channel tutorials

But while supplying tutorial videos is one thing, providing the actual software addons is another. Surprisingly, No-Issue does that too. Filed away under the URL http://solved.no-issue.is/ is a Kodi repository which distributes a wide range of addons, including many that specialize in infringing content, according to the Kodi team.

The No-Issue repository

A source familiar with Raw-Media’s devices informs TF that they’re no longer delivered with addons installed. However, tools hosted on No-Issue.is automate the installation process for the customer, with unlisted YouTube Videos (1,2) providing the instructions.

XBMC Foundation President Nathan Betzen says that situation isn’t ideal.

“If that really is his repo it is disappointing to see that Gavora is charging a fee or outright preventing the sale of boxes with Kodi installed that do not include infringing add-ons, while at the same time he is distributing boxes himself that do include the infringing add-ons like this,” Betzen told TF.

While the legality of this type of service is yet to be properly tested in Canada and may yet emerge as entirely permissible under local law, Gavora himself previously described his business as operating in a gray area.

“If I could go back in time four years, I would’ve been more aggressive in the beginning because there was a lot of uncertainty being in a gray market business about how far I could push it,” he said.

“I really shouldn’t say it’s a gray market because everything I do is completely above board, I just felt it was more gray market so I was a bit scared,” he added.

But, legality aside (which will be determined in due course through various cases 1,2), the situation is still problematic when it comes to the Kodi trademark.

The official Kodi team indicate they don’t want to be associated with any kind of questionable addon or even tutorials for the same. Nevertheless, several of the addons installed by No-Issue (including PrimeWire, cCloud TV, Genesis, Icefilms, MoviesHD, MuchMovies and Navi-X, to name a few), are present on the Kodi team’s official ban list.

The fact remains, however, that Gavora successfully registered the trademark in Canada (one month later it was transferred to a brand new company at the same address), and Kodi now have no control over the situation in the country, short of a settlement or some kind of legal action.

Kodi matters aside, though, we get more insight into Gavora’s attitudes towards intellectual property after learning that he studied gemology and jewelry at school. He’s a long-standing member of jewelry discussion forum Ganoskin.com (his profile links to Gavora.com, a domain Gavora owns, as per information supplied by Amazon).

Things get particularly topical in a 2006 thread titled “When your work gets ripped“. The original poster asked how people feel when their jewelry work gets copied and Gavora made his opinions known.

“I think that what most people forget to remember is that when a piece from Tiffany’s or Cartier is ripped off or copied they don’t usually just copy the work, they will stamp it with their name as well,” Gavora said.

“This is, in fact, fraud and they are deceiving clients into believing they are purchasing genuine Tiffany’s or Cartier pieces. The client is in fact more interested in purchasing from an artist than they are the piece. Laying claim to designs (unless a symbol or name is involved) is outrageous.”

Unless that ‘design’ is called Kodi, of course, then it’s possible to claim it as your own through an administrative process and begin demanding licensing fees from the public. That being said, Gavora does seem to flip back and forth a little, later suggesting that being copied is sometimes ok.

“If someone copies your design and produces it under their own name, I think one should be honored and revel in the fact that your design is successful and has caused others to imitate it and grow from it,” he wrote.

“I look forward to the day I see one of my original designs copied, that is the day I will know my design is a success.”

From their public statements, this opinion isn’t shared by the Kodi team in respect of their product. Despite the Kodi name, software and logo being all their own work, they now find themselves having to claw back rights in Canada, in order to keep the product free in the region. For now, however, that seems like a difficult task.

TorrentFreak wrote to Gavora and asked him why he felt the need to register the Kodi trademark, but we received no response. That means we didn’t get the chance to ask him why he’s taking down Amazon listings for other people’s devices, or about something else that came up in the podcast.

“My biggest weakness, I guess, is that I’m too ethical about how I do my business,” he said, referring to how he deals with customers.

Only time will tell how that philosophy will affect Gavora’s attitudes to trademarks and people’s desire not to be charged for using free, open source software.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

People can’t read (Equifax edition)

Post Syndicated from Robert Graham original http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/09/people-cant-read-equifax-edition.html

One of these days I’m going to write a guide for journalists reporting on the cyber. One of the items I’d stress is that they often fail to read the text of what is being said, but instead read some sort of subtext that wasn’t explicitly said. This is valid sometimes — as the subtext is what the writer intended all along, even if they didn’t explicitly write it. Other times, though the imagined subtext is not what the writer intended at all.

A good example is the recent Equifax breach. The original statement says:

Equifax Inc. (NYSE: EFX) today announced a cybersecurity incident potentially impacting approximately 143 million U.S. consumers.

The word consumers was widely translated to customers, as in this Bloomberg story:

Equifax Inc. said its systems were struck by a cyberattack that may have affected about 143 million U.S. customers of the credit reporting agency

But these aren’t the same thing. Equifax is a credit rating agency, keeping data on people who are not its own customers. It’s an important difference.

Another good example is yesterday’s quote “confirming” that the “Apache Struts” vulnerability was to blame:

Equifax has been intensely investigating the scope of the intrusion with the assistance of a leading, independent cybersecurity firm to determine what information was accessed and who has been impacted. We know that criminals exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability. The vulnerability was Apache Struts CVE-2017-5638.

But it doesn’t confirm Struts was responsible. Blaming Struts is certainly the subtext of this paragraph, but it’s not the text. It mentions that criminals had exploited the Struts vulnerability, but don’t actually connect the dots to the breach we are all talking about.

There’s probably reasons for this. While it’s easy for forensics to find evidence of Struts exploitation in logfiles, it’s much harder to connect this to the breach. While they suspect Struts, they may not actually be able to confirm it. Or, maybe they are trying to cover things up, where they feel failing to patch is a lesser crime than what they really did.

It’s at this point journalists should earn their pay. Instead rewriting what they read on the Internet, they could do legwork and call up Equifax PR and ask.

The purpose of this post isn’t to discuss Equifax, but the tendency of people to “read between the lines”, to read some subtext that wasn’t actually expressed in the text. Sometimes the subtext is legitimately there, such as how Equifax clearly intends people to blame Struts thought they don’t say it outright. Sometimes the subtext isn’t there, such as how Equifax doesn’t mean it’s own customers, only “U.S. consumers”. Journalists need to be careful about making assumptions about the subtext.

Update: The Equifax CSO has a degree in music. Some people have criticized this. Most people have defended this, pointing out that almost nobody has an “infosec” degree in our industry, and many of the top people have no degree at all. Among others, @thegrugq has pointed out that infosec degrees are only a few years old — they weren’t around 20 years ago when today’s corporate officers were getting their degrees.

Again, we have the text/subtext problem, where people interpret infosec degrees as being the same as computer-science degrees, the later of which have existed for decades. Some, as in this case, consider them to be wildly different. Others consider them to be nearly the same.

EU Prepares Guidelines to Force Google & Facebook to Police Piracy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/eu-prepares-guidelines-to-force-google-facebook-to-police-piracy-170915/

In the current climate, creators and distributors are forced to play a giant game of whac-a-mole to limit the unlicensed spread of their content on the Internet.

The way the law stands today in the United States, EU, and most other developed countries, copyright holders must wait for content to appear online before sending targeted takedown notices to hosts, service providers, and online platforms.

After sending several billion of these notices, patience is wearing thin, so a new plan is beginning to emerge. Rather than taking down content after it appears, major entertainment industry groups would prefer companies to take proactive action. The upload filters currently under discussion in Europe are a prime example but are already causing controversy.

Continuing the momentum in this direction, Reuters reports that the European Union will publish draft guidelines at the end of this month, urging platforms such as Google and Facebook to take a more proactive approach to illegal content of all kinds.

“Online platforms need to significantly step up their actions to address this problem,” the draft EU guidelines say.

“They need to be proactive in weeding out illegal content, put effective notice-and-action procedures in place, and establish well-functioning interfaces with third parties (such as trusted flaggers) and give a particular priority to notifications from national law enforcement authorities.”

On the copyright front, Google already operates interfaces designed to take down infringing content. And, as the recent agreement in the UK with copyright holders shows, is also prepared to make infringing content harder to find. Nevertheless, it will remain to be seen if Google is prepared to give even ‘trusted’ third-parties a veto on what content can appear online, without having oversight itself.

The guidelines are reportedly non-binding but further legislation in this area isn’t being ruled out for Spring 2018, if companies fail to make significant progress.

Interestingly, however, a Commission source told Reuters that any new legislation would not “change the liability exemption for online platforms.” Maintaining these so-called ‘safe harbors’ is a priority for online giants such as Google and Facebook – anything less would almost certainly be a deal-breaker.

The guidelines, due to be published at the end of September, will also encourage online platforms to publish transparency reports. These should detail the volume of notices received and actions subsequently taken. Again, Google is way ahead of the game here, having published this kind of data for the past several years.

“The guidelines also contain safeguards against excessive removal of content, such as giving its owners a right to contest such a decision,” Reuters adds.

More will be known about the proposals in a couple of weeks but it’s quite likely they’ll spark another round of debate on whether legislation is the best route to tackle illegal content or whether voluntary agreements – which have a tendency to be rather less open – should be the way to go.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

timeShift(GrafanaBuzz, 1w) Issue 13

Post Syndicated from Blogs on Grafana Labs Blog original https://grafana.com/blog/2017/09/15/timeshiftgrafanabuzz-1w-issue-13/

It’s been a busy week here at Grafana Labs – Grafana 4.5 is now available! We’ve made a lot of enhancements and added new features in this release, so be sure and check out the release blog post to see the full changelog. The GrafanaCon EU CFP is officially open so please don’t forget to submit your topic. We’re looking for technical and non-technical talks of all sizes.

Latest Release

Grafana v4.5 is available for download. The new Grafana 4.5 release includes major improvements to the query editors for Prometheus, Elasticsearch and MySQL.
View the changelog.

Download Grafana 4.5 Now

From the Blogosphere

Percona Live Europe Featured Talks: Visualize Your Data with Grafana Featuring Daniel Lee: The folks from Percona sat down with Grafana Labs Software Developer Daniel Lee to discuss his upcoming talk at PerconaLive Europe 2017, Dublin, and how data can drive better decision making for your business. Get your tickets now, and use code: SeeMeSpeakPLE17 for 10% off!

Register Now

Performance monitoring with ELK / Grafana: This article walks you through setting up the ELK stack to monitor webpage load time, but switches out Kibana for Grafana so you can visualize data from other sources right next to this performance data.

ESXi Lab Series: Aaron created a video mini-series about implementing both offensive and defensive security in an ESXi Lab environment. Parts four and five focus on monitoring with Grafana, but you’ll probably want to start with one.

Raspberry Pi Monitoring with Grafana: We’ve been excited to see more and more articles about Grafana from Raspberry Pi users. This article helps you install and configure Grafana, and also touches on what monitoring is and why it’s important.

Grafana Plugins

This week we were busy putting the finishing touches on the new release, but we do have an update to the Gnocchi data source plugin to announce, and a new annotation plugin that works with any data source. Install or update plugins on an on-prem instance using the Grafana-cli, or with one click on Hosted Grafana.

NEW PLUGIN

Simple Annotations – Frustrated with using a data source that doesn’t support annotations? This is a simple annotation plugin for Grafana that works with any data source!

Install Now

UPDATED PLUGIN

Gnocchi Data Source – The latest release adds the reaggregation feature. Gnocchi can pre-compute the aggregation of timeseries (ex: aggregate the mean every 10 minute for 1 year). Then allows you to (re)aggregate timeseries, since stored timeseries have already been aggregated. A big shout out to sileht for adding new features to the Gnocchi plugin.

Update Now

GrafanaCon EU Call for Papers is Open

Have a big idea to share? A shorter talk or a demo you’d like to show off? We’re looking for technical and non-technical talks of all sizes.

I’d Like to Speak at GrafanaCon

Tweet of the Week

We scour Twitter each week to find an interesting/beautiful dashboard and show it off! #monitoringLove

Awesome – really looking forward to seeing updates as you get to 1.0!

We Need Your Help

We’re conducting an experiment and need your help. Do you have a graph that you love because the data is beautiful or because the graph provides interesting information? Please get in touch. Tweet or send us an email with a screenshot, and we’ll tell you about the experiment.

Be Part of the Experiment

Grafana Labs is Hiring!

We are passionate about open source software and thrive on tackling complex challenges to build the future. We ship code from every corner of the globe and love working with the community. If this sounds exciting, you’re in luck – WE’RE HIRING!

Check out our Open Positions

What do you think?

We’re always interested in how we can improve our weekly roundups. Submit a comment on this article below, or post something at our community forum. Help us make these roundups better and better!

Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and join the Grafana Labs community.

Founder of Fan-Made Subtitle Site Convicted for Copyright Infringement

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/founder-of-subtitle-site-convicted-for-copyright-infringement-170914/

Every day millions of people enjoy fan-made subtitles. They help foreigners understand English-speaking entertainment and provide the deaf with a way to comprehend audio.

Quite often these subtitles are used in combination with pirated files. This is a thorn in the side to copyright holder groups, who see this as a threat to their business.

In Sweden, Undertexter was one of the leading subtitle resources for roughly a decade. The site allowed users to submit their own translated subtitles for movies and TV shows, which were then made available to the public.

In the summer of 2013, this reign came to an end after the site was pulled offline. Following pressure from Hollywood-based movie companies, police raided the site and seized its servers.

The raid and subsequent criminal investigation came as a surprise to the site’s founder, Eugen Archy, who didn’t think he or the site’s users were offering an illegal service.

“The people who work on the site don’t consider their own interpretation of dialog to be something illegal, especially when we’re handing out these interpretations for free,” he said at the time.

The arrest made it clear that the authorities disagreed. The Undertexter founder was prosecuted for distributing copyright-infringing subtitles, risking a possible prison sentence. While Archy was found guilty this week, luckily for him he remains a free man.

The Attunda District Court sentenced the now 32-year-old operator to probation. In addition, he has to pay 217,000 Swedish Kroner ($27,000), which will be taken from the advertising and donation revenues he collected through the site.

While there were millions of subtitles available on Undertexter, only 74 movies were referenced by the prosecution. These were carefully selected to ensure a strong case it seems, as many of the titles weren’t commercially available in Sweden at the time.

During the trial, the defense had argued that the fan-made subtitles are not infringing since movies are made up of video and sound, with subtitles being an extra. However, the court disagreed with this line of reasoning, the verdict shows.

While the copyright holders may have hoped for a heftier punishment, the ruling confirms that fan-made subtitles can be seen as copyright infringements. Prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson is satisfied with the outcome, IDG reports, but he will leave the option to appeal open for now.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Prime Day 2017 – Powered by AWS

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/prime-day-2017-powered-by-aws/

The third annual Prime Day set another round of records for global orders, topping Black Friday and Cyber Monday, making it the biggest day in Amazon retail history. Over the course of the 30 hour event, tens of millions of Prime members purchased things like Echo Dots, Fire tablets, programmable pressure cookers, espresso machines, rechargeable batteries, and much more! July 11th also set a record for the number of new Prime memberships, as people signed up in order to take advantage of hundreds of thousands of deals. Amazon customers shopped online and made heavy use of the Amazon App, with mobile orders more than doubling from last Prime Day.

Powered by AWS
Last year I told you about How AWS Powered Amazon’s Biggest Day Ever, and shared what the team had learned with regard to preparation, automation, monitoring, and thinking big. All of those lessons still apply and you can read that post to learn more. Preparation for this year’s Prime Day (which started just days after Prime Day 2016 wrapped up) started by collecting and sharing best practices and identifying areas for improvement, proceeding to implementation and stress testing as the big day approached. Two of the best practices involve auditing and GameDay:

Auditing – This is a formal way for us to track preparations, identify risks, and to track progress against our objectives. Each team must respond to a series of detailed technical and operational questions that are designed to help them determine their readiness. On the technical side, questions could revolve around time to recovery after a database failure, including the all-important check of the TTL (time to live) for the CNAME. Operational questions address schedules for on-call personnel, points of contact, and ownership of services & instances.

GameDay – This practice (which I believe originated with former Amazonian Jesse Robbins), is intended to validate all of the capacity planning & preparation and to verify that all of the necessary operational practices are in place and work as expected. It introduces simulated failures and helps to train the team to identify and quickly resolve issues, building muscle memory in the process. It also tests failover and recovery capabilities, and can expose latent defects that are lurking under the covers. GameDays help teams to understand scaling drivers (page views, orders, and so forth) and gives them an opportunity to test their scaling practices. To learn more, read Resilience Engineering: Learning to Embrace Failure or watch the video: GameDay: Creating Resiliency Through Destruction.

Prime Day 2017 Metrics
So, how did we do this year?

The AWS teams checked their dashboards and log files, and were happy to share their metrics with me. Here are a few of the most interesting ones:

Block Storage – Use of Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) grew by 40% year-over-year, with aggregate data transfer jumping to 52 petabytes (a 50% increase) for the day and total I/O requests rising to 835 million (a 30% increase). The team told me that they loved the elasticity of EBS, and that they were able to ramp down on capacity after Prime Day concluded instead of being stuck with it.

NoSQL Database – Amazon DynamoDB requests from Alexa, the Amazon.com sites, and the Amazon fulfillment centers totaled 3.34 trillion, peaking at 12.9 million per second. According to the team, the extreme scale, consistent performance, and high availability of DynamoDB let them meet needs of Prime Day without breaking a sweat.

Stack Creation – Nearly 31,000 AWS CloudFormation stacks were created for Prime Day in order to bring additional AWS resources on line.

API Usage – AWS CloudTrail processed over 50 billion events and tracked more than 419 billion calls to various AWS APIs, all in support of Prime Day.

Configuration Tracking – AWS Config generated over 14 million Configuration items for AWS resources.

You Can Do It
Running an event that is as large, complex, and mission-critical as Prime Day takes a lot of planning. If you have an event of this type in mind, please take a look at our new Infrastructure Event Readiness white paper. Inside, you will learn how to design and provision your applications to smoothly handle planned scaling events such as product launches or seasonal traffic spikes, with sections on automation, resiliency, cost optimization, event management, and more.

— Jeff;

 

Manage Kubernetes Clusters on AWS Using CoreOS Tectonic

Post Syndicated from Arun Gupta original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/kubernetes-clusters-aws-coreos-tectonic/

There are multiple ways to run a Kubernetes cluster on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The first post in this series explained how to manage a Kubernetes cluster on AWS using kops. This second post explains how to manage a Kubernetes cluster on AWS using CoreOS Tectonic.

Tectonic overview

Tectonic delivers the most current upstream version of Kubernetes with additional features. It is a commercial offering from CoreOS and adds the following features over the upstream:

  • Installer
    Comes with a graphical installer that installs a highly available Kubernetes cluster. Alternatively, the cluster can be installed using AWS CloudFormation templates or Terraform scripts.
  • Operators
    An operator is an application-specific controller that extends the Kubernetes API to create, configure, and manage instances of complex stateful applications on behalf of a Kubernetes user. This release includes an etcd operator for rolling upgrades and a Prometheus operator for monitoring capabilities.
  • Console
    A web console provides a full view of applications running in the cluster. It also allows you to deploy applications to the cluster and start the rolling upgrade of the cluster.
  • Monitoring
    Node CPU and memory metrics are powered by the Prometheus operator. The graphs are available in the console. A large set of preconfigured Prometheus alerts are also available.
  • Security
    Tectonic ensures that cluster is always up to date with the most recent patches/fixes. Tectonic clusters also enable role-based access control (RBAC). Different roles can be mapped to an LDAP service.
  • Support
    CoreOS provides commercial support for clusters created using Tectonic.

Tectonic can be installed on AWS using a GUI installer or Terraform scripts. The installer prompts you for the information needed to boot the Kubernetes cluster, such as AWS access and secret key, number of master and worker nodes, and instance size for the master and worker nodes. The cluster can be created after all the options are specified. Alternatively, Terraform assets can be downloaded and the cluster can be created later. This post shows using the installer.

CoreOS License and Pull Secret

Even though Tectonic is a commercial offering, a cluster for up to 10 nodes can be created by creating a free account at Get Tectonic for Kubernetes. After signup, a CoreOS License and Pull Secret files are provided on your CoreOS account page. Download these files as they are needed by the installer to boot the cluster.

IAM user permission

The IAM user to create the Kubernetes cluster must have access to the following services and features:

  • Amazon Route 53
  • Amazon EC2
  • Elastic Load Balancing
  • Amazon S3
  • Amazon VPC
  • Security groups

Use the aws-policy policy to grant the required permissions for the IAM user.

DNS configuration

A subdomain is required to create the cluster, and it must be registered as a public Route 53 hosted zone. The zone is used to host and expose the console web application. It is also used as the static namespace for the Kubernetes API server. This allows kubectl to be able to talk directly with the master.

The domain may be registered using Route 53. Alternatively, a domain may be registered at a third-party registrar. This post uses a kubernetes-aws.io domain registered at a third-party registrar and a tectonic subdomain within it.

Generate a Route 53 hosted zone using the AWS CLI. Download jq to run this command:

ID=$(uuidgen) && \
aws route53 create-hosted-zone \
--name tectonic.kubernetes-aws.io \
--caller-reference $ID \
| jq .DelegationSet.NameServers

The command shows an output such as the following:

[
  "ns-1924.awsdns-48.co.uk",
  "ns-501.awsdns-62.com",
  "ns-1259.awsdns-29.org",
  "ns-749.awsdns-29.net"
]

Create NS records for the domain with your registrar. Make sure that the NS records can be resolved using a utility like dig web interface. A sample output would look like the following:

The bottom of the screenshot shows NS records configured for the subdomain.

Download and run the Tectonic installer

Download the Tectonic installer (version 1.7.1) and extract it. The latest installer can always be found at coreos.com/tectonic. Start the installer:

./tectonic/tectonic-installer/$PLATFORM/installer

Replace $PLATFORM with either darwin or linux. The installer opens your default browser and prompts you to select the cloud provider. Choose Amazon Web Services as the platform. Choose Next Step.

Specify the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key for the IAM role that you created earlier. This allows the installer to create resources required for the Kubernetes cluster. This also gives the installer full access to your AWS account. Alternatively, to protect the integrity of your main AWS credentials, use a temporary session token to generate temporary credentials.

You also need to choose a region in which to install the cluster. For the purpose of this post, I chose a region close to where I live, Northern California. Choose Next Step.

Give your cluster a name. This name is part of the static namespace for the master and the address of the console.

To enable in-place update to the Kubernetes cluster, select the checkbox next to Automated Updates. It also enables update to the etcd and Prometheus operators. This feature may become a default in future releases.

Choose Upload “tectonic-license.txt” and upload the previously downloaded license file.

Choose Upload “config.json” and upload the previously downloaded pull secret file. Choose Next Step.

Let the installer generate a CA certificate and key. In this case, the browser may not recognize this certificate, which I discuss later in the post. Alternatively, you can provide a CA certificate and a key in PEM format issued by an authorized certificate authority. Choose Next Step.

Use the SSH key for the region specified earlier. You also have an option to generate a new key. This allows you to later connect using SSH into the Amazon EC2 instances provisioned by the cluster. Here is the command that can be used to log in:

ssh –i <key> [email protected]<ec2-instance-ip>

Choose Next Step.

Define the number and instance type of master and worker nodes. In this case, create a 6 nodes cluster. Make sure that the worker nodes have enough processing power and memory to run the containers.

An etcd cluster is used as persistent storage for all of Kubernetes API objects. This cluster is required for the Kubernetes cluster to operate. There are three ways to use the etcd cluster as part of the Tectonic installer:

  • (Default) Provision the cluster using EC2 instances. Additional EC2 instances are used in this case.
  • Use an alpha support for cluster provisioning using the etcd operator. The etcd operator is used for automated operations of the etcd master nodes for the cluster itself, in addition to for etcd instances that are created for application usage. The etcd cluster is provisioned within the Tectonic installer.
  • Bring your own pre-provisioned etcd cluster.

Use the first option in this case.

For more information about choosing the appropriate instance type, see the etcd hardware recommendation. Choose Next Step.

Specify the networking options. The installer can create a new public VPC or use a pre-existing public or private VPC. Make sure that the VPC requirements are met for an existing VPC.

Give a DNS name for the cluster. Choose the domain for which the Route 53 hosted zone was configured earlier, such as tectonic.kubernetes-aws.io. Multiple clusters may be created under a single domain. The cluster name and the DNS name would typically match each other.

To select the CIDR range, choose Show Advanced Settings. You can also choose the Availability Zones for the master and worker nodes. By default, the master and worker nodes are spread across multiple Availability Zones in the chosen region. This makes the cluster highly available.

Leave the other values as default. Choose Next Step.

Specify an email address and password to be used as credentials to log in to the console. Choose Next Step.

At any point during the installation, you can choose Save progress. This allows you to save configurations specified in the installer. This configuration file can then be used to restore progress in the installer at a later point.

To start the cluster installation, choose Submit. At another time, you can download the Terraform assets by choosing Manually boot. This allows you to boot the cluster later.

The logs from the Terraform scripts are shown in the installer. When the installation is complete, the console shows that the Terraform scripts were successfully applied, the domain name was resolved successfully, and that the console has started. The domain works successfully if the DNS resolution worked earlier, and it’s the address where the console is accessible.

Choose Download assets to download assets related to your cluster. It contains your generated CA, kubectl configuration file, and the Terraform state. This download is an important step as it allows you to delete the cluster later.

Choose Next Step for the final installation screen. It allows you to access the Tectonic console, gives you instructions about how to configure kubectl to manage this cluster, and finally deploys an application using kubectl.

Choose Go to my Tectonic Console. In our case, it is also accessible at http://cluster.tectonic.kubernetes-aws.io/.

As I mentioned earlier, the browser does not recognize the self-generated CA certificate. Choose Advanced and connect to the console. Enter the login credentials specified earlier in the installer and choose Login.

The Kubernetes upstream and console version are shown under Software Details. Cluster health shows All systems go and it means that the API server and the backend API can be reached.

To view different Kubernetes resources in the cluster choose, the resource in the left navigation bar. For example, all deployments can be seen by choosing Deployments.

By default, resources in the all namespace are shown. Other namespaces may be chosen by clicking on a menu item on the top of the screen. Different administration tasks such as managing the namespaces, getting list of the nodes and RBAC can be configured as well.

Download and run Kubectl

Kubectl is required to manage the Kubernetes cluster. The latest version of kubectl can be downloaded using the following command:

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/$(curl -s https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/stable.txt)/bin/darwin/amd64/kubectl

It can also be conveniently installed using the Homebrew package manager. To find and access a cluster, Kubectl needs a kubeconfig file. By default, this configuration file is at ~/.kube/config. This file is created when a Kubernetes cluster is created from your machine. However, in this case, download this file from the console.

In the console, choose admin, My Account, Download Configuration and follow the steps to download the kubectl configuration file. Move this file to ~/.kube/config. If kubectl has already been used on your machine before, then this file already exists. Make sure to take a backup of that file first.

Now you can run the commands to view the list of deployments:

~ $ kubectl get deployments --all-namespaces
NAMESPACE         NAME                                    DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
kube-system       etcd-operator                           1         1         1            1           43m
kube-system       heapster                                1         1         1            1           40m
kube-system       kube-controller-manager                 3         3         3            3           43m
kube-system       kube-dns                                1         1         1            1           43m
kube-system       kube-scheduler                          3         3         3            3           43m
tectonic-system   container-linux-update-operator         1         1         1            1           40m
tectonic-system   default-http-backend                    1         1         1            1           40m
tectonic-system   kube-state-metrics                      1         1         1            1           40m
tectonic-system   kube-version-operator                   1         1         1            1           40m
tectonic-system   prometheus-operator                     1         1         1            1           40m
tectonic-system   tectonic-channel-operator               1         1         1            1           40m
tectonic-system   tectonic-console                        2         2         2            2           40m
tectonic-system   tectonic-identity                       2         2         2            2           40m
tectonic-system   tectonic-ingress-controller             1         1         1            1           40m
tectonic-system   tectonic-monitoring-auth-alertmanager   1         1         1            1           40m
tectonic-system   tectonic-monitoring-auth-prometheus     1         1         1            1           40m
tectonic-system   tectonic-prometheus-operator            1         1         1            1           40m
tectonic-system   tectonic-stats-emitter                  1         1         1            1           40m

This output is similar to the one shown in the console earlier. Now, this kubectl can be used to manage your resources.

Upgrade the Kubernetes cluster

Tectonic allows the in-place upgrade of the cluster. This is an experimental feature as of this release. The clusters can be updated either automatically, or with manual approval.

To perform the update, choose Administration, Cluster Settings. If an earlier Tectonic installer, version 1.6.2 in this case, is used to install the cluster, then this screen would look like the following:

Choose Check for Updates. If any updates are available, choose Start Upgrade. After the upgrade is completed, the screen is refreshed.

This is an experimental feature in this release and so should only be used on clusters that can be easily replaced. This feature may become a fully supported in a future release. For more information about the upgrade process, see Upgrading Tectonic & Kubernetes.

Delete the Kubernetes cluster

Typically, the Kubernetes cluster is a long-running cluster to serve your applications. After its purpose is served, you may delete it. It is important to delete the cluster as this ensures that all resources created by the cluster are appropriately cleaned up.

The easiest way to delete the cluster is using the assets downloaded in the last step of the installer. Extract the downloaded zip file. This creates a directory like <cluster-name>_TIMESTAMP. In that directory, give the following command to delete the cluster:

TERRAFORM_CONFIG=$(pwd)/.terraformrc terraform destroy --force

This destroys the cluster and all associated resources.

You may have forgotten to download the assets. There is a copy of the assets in the directory tectonic/tectonic-installer/darwin/clusters. In this directory, another directory with the name <cluster-name>_TIMESTAMP contains your assets.

Conclusion

This post explained how to manage Kubernetes clusters using the CoreOS Tectonic graphical installer.  For more details, see Graphical Installer with AWS. If the installation does not succeed, see the helpful Troubleshooting tips. After the cluster is created, see the Tectonic tutorials to learn how to deploy, scale, version, and delete an application.

Future posts in this series will explain other ways of creating and running a Kubernetes cluster on AWS.

—Arun

[$] A different approach to kernel configuration

Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/733405/rss

The kernel’s configuration system can be challenging to deal with it; Linus
Torvalds recently called it “one of
the worst parts of the whole project“. Thus, anything that might
help users with the process of configuring a kernel build would be
welcome. A talk by Junghwan Kang at the 2017 Open-Source Summit
demonstrated an interesting approach, even if it’s not quite ready for
prime time yet.

Pioneers Summer Camp 2017

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pioneers-summer-camp-2017/

In July, winners of the first two Pioneers challenges came together at Google HQ at Kings Cross in London for the Pioneers Summer Camp. This event was a special day to celebrate their awesomeness, and to give them access to some really cool stuff.

Pioneers: Google Summer Camp 2017

In July this year, winners of the first two Pioneers challenges came to Google HQ in London’s Kings Cross to meet, make and have an awesome time.

The lucky Pioneers

The summer camp was organised specifically for the winners of the two Pioneers challenges Make us laugh and Make it outdoors. Invitations went out to every team that won an award, including the Theme winners, winners in categories such as Best Explanation or Inspiring Journey, and those teams that received a Judges’ Recognition. We also allowed their mentors to attend, because they earned it too.

Code Club Scotland on Twitter

Excited about @Raspberry_Pi Pioneers day at @Google today with @jm_paterson and The Frontier Team #makeyourideas https://t.co/wZqfqqgZuL

With teams of excited Pioneers arriving from all over the UK, the day was bound to be a great success and a fun experience for all.

The Pioneers Summer Camp

The event took place at the rather impressive Google HQ in King’s Cross, London. Given that YouTube Space London is attached to this building, everyone, including the mentors and the Raspberry Pi team, was immediately eager to explore.

YouTube Space London

image c/o IBT

In rooms designed around David-Bowie-associated themes, e.g. Major Tom and Aladdin Sane, our intrepid Pioneers spent the morning building robots and using the Google AIY Projects kit to control their builds. Every attendee got to keep their robot and AIY kits, to be able to continue their tech experiments at home. They also each received their own Raspberry Pi, as well as some Google goodies and a one-of-a-kind Raspberry Pi hoody…much to the jealousy of many of our Twitter followers.

Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017
Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017
Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017

Meanwhile, mentors were invited to play with their own AIY kits, and the team from pi-top took accompanying parents aside to introduce them to the world of Scratch. This in itself was wonderful to witness: nervous parents started the day anxiously prodding at their pi-top screens, and they ended it with a new understanding of why code and digital making makes their kids tick.

Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017

After the making funtimes, the Pioneers got to learn about career opportunities within the field of digital making from some of the best in the industry. Representatives from Google, YouTube, and the Shell Scholarship Fund offered insights into their day-to-day work and some of their teams’ cool projects.

Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017
Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017
Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017

And to top off the day, our Pioneers winners went on a tour of the YouTube studios, a space to which only YouTube Creators have access. Lucky bunch!

The evening

When the evening rolled around, Pioneers got to work setting up their winning projects. From singing potatoes to sun-powered instruments and builds for plant maintenance, the array of ideas and creations showcased the incredible imagination these young makers have displayed throughout the first two seasons of Pioneers.

Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017
Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017
Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017
Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017

As well as a time for showing off winning makes, the evening was also an opportunity for Pioneers, mentors, and parents to mingle, chat, swap Twitter usernames, and get to know others as interested in making and changing the world as they are.

Raspberry Pi Pioneers Summer Camp 2017

The Pioneers Summer Camp came to a close with a great Q&A by some eager Pioneers, followed by praise from Raspberry Pi Foundation CEO Philip Colligan, Mike Warriner of Google UK, and Make it outdoors judge Georgina Asmah from the Shell Centenary Scholarship Fund.

Become a Pioneer

We’ll be announcing the next Pioneers challenge on Monday 18 September, and we’re so excited to see what our makers do with the next theme. We’ve put a lot of brain power into coming up with the ultimate challenge, and it’s taking everything we have not to let it slip!

Well, maybe I can just…don’t tell anyone, but here’s a sneek peak at part of the logo. Shhhh…

One thing we can tell you: this season of Pioneers will include makers from the Republic of Ireland, thanks in part to the incredible support from our team at CoderDojo. Woohoo!

We’ll announce the challenge via the Raspberry Pi blog, but make sure to sign up for the Pioneers newsletter to get all the latest information directly to your inbox.

The post Pioneers Summer Camp 2017 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

New UK IP Crime Report Reveals Continued Focus on ‘Pirate’ Kodi Boxes

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/new-uk-ip-crime-report-reveals-continued-focus-on-pirate-kodi-boxes-170908/

The UK’s Intellectual Property Office has published its annual IP Crime Report, spanning the period 2016 to 2017.

It covers key events in the copyright and trademark arenas and is presented with input from the police and trading standards, plus private entities such as the BPI, Premier League, and Federation Against Copyright Theft, to name a few.

The report begins with an interesting statistic. Despite claims that many millions of UK citizens regularly engage in some kind of infringement, figures from the Ministry of Justice indicate that just 47 people were found guilty of offenses under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act during 2016. That’s down on the 69 found guilty in the previous year.

Despite this low conviction rate, 15% of all internet users aged 12+ are reported to have consumed at least one item of illegal content between March and May 2017. Figures supplied by the Industry Trust for IP indicate that 19% of adults watch content via various IPTV devices – often referred to as set-top, streaming, Android, or Kodi boxes.

“At its cutting edge IP crime is innovative. It exploits technological loopholes before they become apparent. IP crime involves sophisticated hackers, criminal financial experts, international gangs and service delivery networks. Keeping pace with criminal innovation places a burden on IP crime prevention resources,” the report notes.

The report covers a broad range of IP crime, from counterfeit sportswear to foodstuffs, but our focus is obviously on Internet-based infringement. Various contributors cover various aspects of online activity as it affects them, including music industry group BPI.

“The main online piracy threats to the UK recorded music industry at present are from BitTorrent networks, linking/aggregator sites, stream-ripping sites, unauthorized streaming sites and cyberlockers,” the BPI notes.

The BPI’s website blocking efforts have been closely reported, with 63 infringing sites blocked to date via various court orders. However, the BPI reports that more than 700 related URLs, IP addresses, and proxy sites/ proxy aggregators have also been rendered inaccessible as part of the same action.

“Site blocking has proven to be a successful strategy as the longer the blocks are in place, the more effective they are. We have seen traffic to these sites reduce by an average of 70% or more,” the BPI reports.

While prosecutions against music pirates are a fairly rare event in the UK, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Specialist Fraud Division highlights that their most significant prosecution of the past 12 months involved a prolific music uploader.

As first revealed here on TF, Wayne Evans was an uploader not only on KickassTorrents and The Pirate Bay, but also some of his own sites. Known online as OldSkoolScouse, Evans reportedly cost the UK’s Performing Rights Society more than £1m in a single year. He was sentenced in December 2016 to 12 months in prison.

While Evans has been free for some time already, the CPS places particular emphasis on the importance of the case, “since it provided sentencing guidance for the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, where before there was no definitive guideline.”

The CPS says the case was useful on a number of fronts. Despite illegal distribution of content being difficult to investigate and piracy losses proving tricky to quantify, the court found that deterrent sentences are appropriate for the kinds of offenses Evans was accused of.

The CPS notes that various factors affect the severity of such sentences, not least the length of time the unlawful activity has persisted and particularly if it has done so after the service of a cease and desist notice. Other factors include the profit made by defendants and/or the loss caused to copyright holders “so far as it can accurately be calculated.”

Importantly, however, the CPS says that beyond issues of personal mitigation and timely guilty pleas, a jail sentence is probably going to be the outcome for others engaging in this kind of activity in future. That’s something for torrent and streaming site operators and their content uploaders to consider.

“[U]nless the unlawful activity of this kind is very amateur, minor or short-lived, or in the absence of particularly compelling mitigation or other exceptional circumstances, an immediate custodial sentence is likely to be appropriate in cases of illegal distribution of copyright infringing articles,” the CPS concludes.

But while a music-related trial provided the highlight of the year for the CPS, the online infringement world is still dominated by the rise of streaming sites and the now omnipresent “fully-loaded Kodi Box” – set-top devices configured to receive copyright-infringing live TV and VOD.

In the IP Crime Report, the Intellectual Property Office references a former US Secretary of Defense to describe the emergence of the threat.

“The echoes of Donald Rumsfeld’s famous aphorism concerning ‘known knowns’ and ‘known unknowns’ reverberate across our landscape perhaps more than any other. The certainty we all share is that we must be ready to confront both ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’,” the IPO writes.

“Not long ago illegal streaming through Kodi Boxes was an ‘unknown’. Now, this technology updates copyright infringement by empowering TV viewers with the technology they need to subvert copyright law at the flick of a remote control.”

While the set-top box threat has grown in recent times, the report highlights the important legal clarifications that emerged from the BREIN v Filmspeler case, which found itself before the European Court of Justice.

As widely reported, the ECJ determined that the selling of piracy-configured devices amounts to a communication to the public, something which renders their sale illegal. However, in a submission by PIPCU, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, box sellers are said to cast a keen eye on the legal situation.

“Organised criminals, especially those in the UK who distribute set-top boxes, are aware of recent developments in the law and routinely exploit loopholes in it,” PIPCU reports.

“Given recent judgments on the sale of pre-programmed set-top boxes, it is now unlikely criminals would advertise the devices in a way which is clearly infringing by offering them pre-loaded or ‘fully loaded’ with apps and addons specifically designed to access subscription services for free.”

With sellers beginning to clean up their advertising, it seems likely that detection will become more difficult than when selling was considered a gray area. While that will present its own issues, PIPCU still sees problems on two fronts – a lack of clear legislation and a perception of support for ‘pirate’ devices among the public.

“There is no specific legislation currently in place for the prosecution of end users or sellers of set-top boxes. Indeed, the general public do not see the usage of these devices as potentially breaking the law,” the unit reports.

“PIPCU are currently having to try and ‘shoehorn’ existing legislation to fit the type of criminality being observed, such as conspiracy to defraud (common law) to tackle this problem. Cases are yet to be charged and results will be known by late 2017.”

Whether these prosecutions will be effective remains to be seen, but PIPCU’s comments suggest an air of caution set to a backdrop of box-sellers’ tendency to adapt to legal challenges.

“Due to the complexity of these cases it is difficult to substantiate charges under the Fraud Act (2006). PIPCU have convicted one person under the Serious Crime Act (2015) (encouraging or assisting s11 of the Fraud Act). However, this would not be applicable unless the suspect had made obvious attempts to encourage users to use the boxes to watch subscription only content,” PIPCU notes, adding;

“The selling community is close knit and adapts constantly to allow itself to operate in the gray area where current legislation is unclear and where they feel they can continue to sell ‘under the radar’.”

More generally, pirate sites as a whole are still seen as a threat. As reported last month, the current anti-piracy narrative is that pirate sites represent a danger to their users. As a result, efforts are underway to paint torrent and streaming sites as risky places to visit, with users allegedly exposed to malware and other malicious content. The scare strategy is supported by PIPCU.

“Unlike the purchase of counterfeit physical goods, consumers who buy unlicensed content online are not taking a risk. Faulty copyright doesn’t explode, burn or break. For this reason the message as to why the public should avoid copyright fraud needs to be re-focused.

“A more concerted attempt to push out a message relating to malware on pirate websites, the clear criminality and the links to organized crime of those behind the sites are crucial if public opinion is to be changed,” the unit advises.

But while the changing of attitudes is desirable for pro-copyright entities, PIPCU says that winning over the public may not prove to be an easy battle. It was given a small taste of backlash itself, after taking action against the operator of a pirate site.

“The scale of the problem regarding public opinion of online copyright crime is evidenced by our own experience. After PIPCU executed a warrant against the owner of a streaming website, a tweet about the event (read by 200,000 people) produced a reaction heavily weighted against PIPCU’s legitimate enforcement action,” PIPCU concludes.

In summary, it seems likely that more effort will be expended during the next 12 months to target the set-top box threat, but there doesn’t appear to be an abundance of confidence in existing legislation to tackle all but the most egregious offenders. That being said, a line has now been drawn in the sand – if the public is prepared to respect it.

The full IP Crime Report 2016-2017 is available here (pdf)

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Security Flaw in Estonian National ID Card

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/09/security_flaw_i.html

We have no idea how bad this really is:

On 30 August, an international team of researchers informed the Estonian Information System Authority (RIA) of a vulnerability potentially affecting the digital use of Estonian ID cards. The possible vulnerability affects a total of almost 750,000 ID-cards issued starting from October 2014, including cards issued to e-residents. The ID-cards issued before 16 October 2014 use a different chip and are not affected. Mobile-IDs are also not impacted.

My guess is that it’s worse than the politicians are saying:

According to Peterkop, the current data shows this risk to be theoretical and there is no evidence of anyone’s digital identity being misused. “All ID-card operations are still valid and we will take appropriate actions to secure the functioning of our national digital-ID infrastructure. For example, we have restricted the access to Estonian ID-card public key database to prevent illegal use.”

And because this system is so important in local politics, the effects are significant:

In the light of current events, some Estonian politicians called to postpone the upcoming local elections, due to take place on 16 October. In Estonia, approximately 35% of the voters use digital identity to vote online.

But the Estonian prime minister, Jüri Ratas, said at a press conference on 5 September that “this incident will not affect the course of the Estonian e-state.” Ratas also recommended to use Mobile-IDs where possible. The prime minister said that the State Electoral Office will decide whether it will allow the usage of ID cards at the upcoming local elections.

The Estonian Police and Border Guard estimates it will take approximately two months to fix the issue with faulty cards. The authority will involve as many Estonian experts as possible in the process.

This is exactly the sort of thing I worry about as ID systems become more prevalent and more centralized. Anyone want to place bets on whether a foreign country is going to try to hack the next Estonian election?

Another article.

Chinese Man Jailed For Nine Months For Selling VPN Software

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/chinese-man-jailed-for-nine-months-for-selling-vpn-software-170904/

Back in January, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that due to Internet technologies and services expanding in a “disorderly” fashion, regulation would be needed to restore order.

The government said that it would take measures to “strengthen network information security management” and would embark on a “nationwide Internet network access services clean-up.”

One of the initial targets was reported as censorship-busting VPNs, which allow citizens to evade the so-called Great Firewall of China. Operating such a service without a corresponding telecommunications business license would constitute an offense, the government said.

The news was met with hostility, with media and citizens alike bemoaning Chinese censorship. Then early July, a further report suggested that the government would go a step further by ordering ISPs to block VPNs altogether. This elicited an immediate response from local authorities, who quickly denied the reports, blaming “foreign media” for false reporting.

But it was clear something was amiss in China. Later that month, it was revealed that Apple had banned VPN software and services from its app store.

“We are writing to notify you that your application will be removed from the China App Store because it includes content that is illegal in China, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines,” Apple informed developers.

With an effort clearly underway to target VPNs, news today from China suggests that the government is indeed determined to tackle the anti-censorship threat presented by such tools. According to local media, Chinese man Deng Mouwei who ran a small website through which he sold VPN software, has been sentenced to prison.

The 26-year-old, from the city of Dongguan in the Guangdong province, was first arrested in October 2016 after setting up a website to sell VPNs. Just two products were on offer but this was enough to spring authorities into action.

A prosecution notice, published by Chinese publication Whatsonweibo, reveals the university educated man was arrested “on suspicion of providing tools for illegal control of a computer information system.”

It’s alleged that the man used several phrases to market the VPNs including “VPN over the wall” and “Shadow shuttle cloud”. The business wasn’t particularly profitable though, generating just 13957 yuan ($2,133) since October 2015.

“The court held that the defendant Deng Mouwei disregarded state law, by providing tools specifically for the invasion and illegal control of computer information systems procedures,” the Guandong Province’s First People’s Court said in its ruling, handed down earlier this year but only just made public.

“The circumstances are serious and the behavior violated the ‘Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China Article 285.”

Article 285 – don’t interfere with the state

“The facts of the crime are clear, the evidence is true and sufficient. In accordance with the provisions of Article 172 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China, the defendant shall be sentenced according to law.”

Under Chinese law, Article 172 references stolen goods, noting that people who “conceal or act as distributors” shall be sentenced to not more than three years of fixed-term imprisonment, or fined, depending on circumstances. Where VPNs fit into that isn’t clear, but things didn’t end well for the defendant.

For offering tools that enable people to “visit foreign websites that can not be accessed via a domestic (mainland) IP address,” Deng Mouwei received a nine-month prison sentence.

News of the sentencing appeared on Chinese social media over the weekend, prompting fear and confusion among local users. While many struggled to see the sense of the prosecution, some expressed fear that people who even use VPN software to evade China’s Great Firewall could be subjected to prosecution in the future.

Whatever the outcome, it’s now abundantly clear that China is the midst of a VPN crackdown across the board and is serious about stamping out efforts to bypass its censorship. With the Internet’s ability to treat censorship as damage and route round it, it’s a battle that won’t be easily won.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Datavalet Wi-Fi Blocks TorrentFreak Over ‘Criminal Hacking Skills’

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/datavalet-wi-fi-blocks-torrentfreak-over-criminal-hacking-skills-170903/

At TorrentFreak we regularly write about website blocking efforts around the globe, usually related to well-known pirate sites.

Unfortunately, our own news site is not immune to access restrictions either. While no court has ordered ISPs to block access to our articles, some are doing this voluntarily.

This is especially true for companies that provide Wi-Fi hotspots, such as Datavalet. This wireless network provider works with various large organizations, including McDonald’s, Starbucks, and airports, to offer customers free Internet access.

Or rather to a part of the public Internet, we should say.

Over the past several months, we have had several reports from people who are unable to access TorrentFreak on Datavalet’s network. Users who load our website get an ominous warning instead, suggesting that we run some kind of a criminal hacking operation.

“Access to TORRENTFREAK.COM is not permitted as it is classified as: CRIMINAL SKILLS / HACKING.”

Criminal Skills?

Although we see ourselves as skilled writing news in our small niche, which incidentally covers crime and hacking, our own hacking skills are below par. Admittedly, mistakes are easily made but Datavalet’s blocking efforts are rather persistent.

The same issue was brought to our attention several years ago. At the time, we reached out to Datavalet and a friendly senior network analyst promised that they would look into it.

“We have forwarded your concerns to the proper resources and as soon as we have an update we will let you know,” the response was. But a few years later the block is still active, or active again.

Datavalet is just one one the many networks where TorrentFreak is blocked. Often, we are categorized as a file-sharing site, probably due to the word “torrent” in our name. This recently happened at the NYC Brooklyn library, for example.

After a reader kindly informed the library that we’re a news site, we were suddenly transferred from the “Peer-to-Peer File Sharing” to the “Proxy Avoidance” category.

“It appears that the website you want to access falls under the category ‘Proxy Avoidance’. These are sites that provide information about how to bypass proxy server features or to gain access to URLs in any way that bypass the proxy server,” the library explained.

Still blocked of course.

At least we’re not the only site facing this censorship battle. Datavelet and others regularly engage in overblocking to keep their network and customers safe. For example, Reddit was recently banned because it offered “nudity,” which is another no-go area.

Living up to our “proxy avoidance” reputation, we have to mention that people who regularly face these type of restrictions may want to invest in a VPN. These are generally quite good at bypassing these type of blockades. If they are not blocked themselves, that is.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Implement Continuous Integration and Delivery of Apache Spark Applications using AWS

Post Syndicated from Luis Caro Perez original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/implement-continuous-integration-and-delivery-of-apache-spark-applications-using-aws/

When you develop Apache Spark–based applications, you might face some additional challenges when dealing with continuous integration and deployment pipelines, such as the following common issues:

  • Applications must be tested on real clusters using automation tools (live test)
  • Any user or developer must be able to easily deploy and use different versions of both the application and infrastructure to be able to debug, experiment on, and test different functionality.
  • Infrastructure needs to be evaluated and tested along with the application that uses it.

In this post, we walk you through a solution that implements a continuous integration and deployment pipeline supported by AWS services. The pipeline offers the following workflow:

  • Deploy the application to a QA stage after a commit is performed to the source code.
  • Perform a unit test using Spark local mode.
  • Deploy to a dynamically provisioned Amazon EMR cluster and test the Spark application on it
  • Update the application as an AWS Service Catalog product version, allowing a user to deploy any version (commit) of the application on demand.

Solution overview

The following diagram shows the pipeline workflow.

The solution uses AWS CodePipeline, which allows users to orchestrate and automate the build, test, and deploy stages for application source code. The solution consists of a pipeline that contains the following stages:

  • Source: Both the Spark application source code in addition to the AWS CloudFormation template file for deploying the application are committed to version control. In this example, we use AWS CodeCommit. For an example of the application source code, see zip. 
  • Build: In this stage, you use Apache Maven both to generate the application .jar binaries and to execute all of the application unit tests that end with *Spec.scala. In this example, we use AWS CodeBuild, which runs the unit tests given that they are designed to use Spark local mode.
  • QADeploy: In this stage, the .jar file built previously is deployed using the CloudFormation template included with the application source code. All the resources are created in this stage, such as networks, EMR clusters, and so on. 
  • LiveTest: In this stage, you use Apache Maven to execute all the application tests that end with *SpecLive.scala. The tests submit EMR steps to the cluster created as part of the QADeploy step. The tests verify that the steps ran successfully and their results. 
  • LiveTestApproval: This stage is included in case a pipeline administrator approval is required to deploy the application to the next stages. The pipeline pauses in this stage until an administrator manually approves the release. 
  • QACleanup: In this stage, you use an AWS Lambda function to delete the CloudFormation template deployed as part of the QADeploy stage. The function does not affect any resources other than those deployed as part of the QADeploy stage. 
  • DeployProduct: In this stage, you use a Lambda function that creates or updates an AWS Service Catalog product and portfolio. Every time the pipeline releases a change to the application, the AWS Service Catalog product gets a new version, with the commit of the change as the version description. 

Try it out!

Use the provided sample template to get started using this solution. This template creates the pipeline described earlier with all of its stages. It performs an initial commit of the sample Spark application in order to trigger the first release change. To deploy the template, use the following AWS CLI command:

aws cloudformation create-stack  --template-url https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-bigdata-blog/artifacts/sparkAppDemoForPipeline/emrSparkpipeline.yaml --stack-name emr-spark-pipeline --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM

After the template finishes creating resources, you see the pipeline name on the stack Outputs tab. After that, open the AWS CodePipeline console and select the newly created pipeline.

After a couple of minutes, AWS CodePipeline detects the initial commit applied by the CloudFormation stack and starts the first release.

You can watch how the pipeline goes through the Build, QADeploy, and LiveTest stages until it finally reaches the LiveTestApproval stage.

At this point, you can check the results of the test in the log files of the Build and LiveTest stage jobs on AWS CodeBuild. If you check the CloudFormation console, you see that a new template has been deployed as part of the QADeploy stage.

You can also visit the EMR console and view how the LiveTest stage submitted steps to the EMR cluster.

After performing the review, manually approve the revision on the LiveTestApproval stage by using the AWS CodePipeline console.

After the revision is approved, the pipeline proceeds to use a Lambda function that destroys the resources deployed on the QAdeploy stage. Finally, it creates or updates a product and portfolio in AWS Service Catalog. After the final stage of the pipeline is complete, you can check that the product is created successfully on the AWS Service Catalog console.

You can check the product versions and notice that the first version is the initial commit performed by the CloudFormation template.

You can proceed to share the created portfolio with any users in your AWS account and allow them to deploy any version of the Spark application. You can also perform a commit on the AWS CodeCommit repository. The pipeline is triggered automatically and repeats the pipeline execution to deploy a new version of the product.

To destroy all of the resources created by the stack, make sure all the deployed stacks using AWS Service Catalog or the QAdeploy stage are destroyed. Then, destroy the pipeline template using the following AWS CLI command:

 

aws cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name emr-spark-pipeline

Conclusion

You can use the sample template and Spark application shared in this post and adapt them for the specific needs of your own application. The pipeline can have as many stages as needed and it can be used to automatically deploy to AWS Service Catalog or a production environment using CloudFormation.

If you have questions or suggestions, please comment below.

Additional Reading

Learn how to implement authorization and auditing on Amazon EMR using Apache Ranger.

 

About the Authors

Luis Caro is a Big Data Consultant for AWS Professional Services. He works with our customers to provide guidance and technical assistance on big data projects, helping them improving the value of their solutions when using AWS.

 

 

Samuel Schmidt is a Big Data Consultant for AWS Professional Services. He works with our customers to provide guidance and technical assistance on big data projects, helping them improving the value of their solutions when using AWS.

 

 

 

Amazon Aurora Fast Database Cloning

Post Syndicated from Randall Hunt original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-aurora-fast-database-cloning/

Today, I want to quickly show off a feature of Amazon Aurora that I find incredibly useful: Fast Database Cloning. By taking advantage of Aurora’s underlying distributed storage engine you’re able to quickly and cheaply create a copy-on-write clone of your database.

In my career I’ve frequently spent time waiting on some representative sample of data to use in development, experiments, or analytics. If I had a 2TB database it could take hours just waiting for a copy of the data to be ready before I could peform my tasks. Even within RDS MySQL, I would still have to wait several hours for a snapshot copy to complete before I was able to test a schema migration or perform some analytics. Aurora solves this problem in a very interesting way.

The distributed storage engine for Aurora allows us to do things which are normally not feasible or cost-effective with a traditional database engine. By creating pointers to individual pages of data the storage engine enables fast database cloning. Then, when you make changes to the data in the source or the clone, a copy-on-write protocol creates a new copy of that page and updates the pointers. This means my 2TB snapshot restore job that used to take an hour is now ready in about 5 minutes – and most of that time is spent provisioning a new RDS instance.

The time it takes to create the clone is independent of the size of the database since we’re pointing at the same storage. It also makes cloning a very cost-effective operation since I only pay storage costs for the changed pages instead of an entire copy. The database clone is still a regular Aurora Database Cluster with all the same durability guarentees.

Let’s clone a database. First, I’ll select an Aurora (MySQL) instance and select “create-clone” from the Instance Actions.

Next I’ll name our clone dolly-the-sheep and provision it.

It took about 5 minutes and 30 seconds for my clone to become available and I started making some large schema changes and saw no performance impact. The schema changes themselves completed faster than they would have on traditional MySQL due to improvements the Aurora team made to enable faster DDL operations. I could subsequently create a clone-of-a-clone or even a clone-of-a-clone-of-a-clone (and so on) if I wanted to have another team member perform some tests on my schema changes while I continued to make changes of my own. It’s important to note here that clones are first class databases from the perspective of RDS. I still have all of the features that every other Aurora database supports: snapshots, backups, monitoring and more.

I hope this feature will allow you and your teams to save a lot of time and money on experimenting and developing applications based on Amazon Aurora. You can read more about this feature in the Amazon Aurora User Guide and I strongly suggest following the AWS Database Blog. Anurag Gupta’s posts on quorums and Amazon Aurora storage are particularly interesting.

Have follow-up questions or feedback? Ping us at [email protected], or leave a comment here. We’d love to get your thoughts and suggestions.

– Randall

Game of Thrones Piracy Peaks After Season Finale

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/game-of-thrones-piracy-peaks-after-season-finale-170828/

The seventh season of Game of Thrones has been the most-viewed thus far, with record-breaking TV ratings.

Traditionally, the season finale is among the most-viewed episodes of the season. This is true on official channels, but also on pirate sites.

Despite numerous legal options, Game of Thrones remains extremely popular among pirates. Minutes after the official broadcast ended last night people flocked to various torrent and streaming sites, to watch it for free.

Looking at the torrent download numbers we see that the latest episode is topping all previous ones of this season. At the time of writing, more than 400,000 people were actively sharing one of the many available torrents.

Some of the more popular GoT torrents

While the demand is significant, there is no all time “swarm record” as we saw two years ago.

In part, this may be due to improved legal options, but the recent rise of pirate streaming sites and services are also ‘stealing’ traffic. While there is no hard data available, millions of people now use streaming sites and services to watch pirated episodes of Game of Thrones.

Record or not, there is little doubt that Game of Thrones will end up being the most pirated show of the year once again. That will be the sixth year in a row, which is unprecedented.

In recent years, HBO has tried to contain piracy by sending DMCA takedown notices to pirate sites. In addition, the company also warned tens of thousands of BitTorrent downloaders directly. Nonetheless, many people still find their way to this unofficial market.

While HBO has grown used to mass-scale piracy in recent years, it encountered some other major setbacks this season. Hackers leaked preliminary outlines of various episodes before they aired. The same hackers also threatened to release the season finale, but that never happened.

There were two episode leaks this year, but these were unrelated to the aforementioned. The fourth episode leaked through the Indian media processing company Prime Focus Technologies, which resulted in several arrests. Two weeks later, HBO Spain accidentally made the sixth episode public days in advance, which spread online soon after.

On the upside. Piracy aside, the interest of the media and millions of ‘legal’ viewers appears to be on a high as well, so there’s certainly something left to celebrate.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.