Mozilla Statement on Recent Reports of Aadhaar Data Being Breached

Mozilla has published a statement on their Open Policy and Advocacy blog about the recent report that it is possible to purchase a cracked software for as little as ₹2000 (US$30) to get ‘write’ rights to the Aadhaar database, allowing you to update any information in there without any kind of verification or checks.

The official Mozilla statement is as follows:

Mozilla is deeply alarmed by recent reports that it is possible to purchase editing rights to the Aadhaar database for a mere 2,000 rupees.

Mozilla has long argued that the Aadhaar lacks critical safeguards. With the demographic data reportedly compromised, it is hard to see how Aadhaar can be trusted for authentication. Access to myriad vital public and private services which require Aadhaar for more than a billion Indians is now at risk.

Mozilla calls for the UIDAI to close these glaring security loopholes, and to engage an independent firm to do a security audit of the Aadhaar. We further call on the Justice Srikrishna Committee and the Government of India to ensure that the forthcoming data protection bill strongly protects Indians, including from the privacy and security harms that they’ve already suffered from Aadhaar.

May 2, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Man has his France.com Domain Seized by the Country, So He’s Suing Them

Cyrus Farivar, writing for Ars Technica:

[…] sometime around 2015, that very same ministry initiated a lawsuit in France in an attempt to wrest control of the France.com domain away from Frydman.

By September 2017, the Paris Court of Appeals ruled that France.com was violating French trademark law.

and…

[…] on March 12, 2018, Web.com abruptly transferred ownership of the domain to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The company did so without any formal notification to Frydman and no compensation.

I wouldn’t blame Web.com — it seems like they had to follow the rule of the law, but not notifying an old client of theirs of such a thing — that’s just lousy and also very bad customer service.

This story also makes me wonder how much of our identities — what people know us for — are dependent on a single decision maker at some online service company. It’s incredibly scary how easy it is for someone to flick a switch, for example, and stop you from accessing your primary domain, email address, or account.

April 30, 2018 ✚ Permalink

BuySellAds Acquires Digg

BuySellAds — the popular ad-tech company — has just bought Digg from BetaWorks.

Cale Guthrie Weissman, reporting for Fast Company:

The company bought Digg’s assets, as well as its editorial and revenue teams, for an undisclosed amount. Additionally, the blockchain-based digital publishing platform Civil has hired up many people from Digg’s tech team.

BuySellAds owns brands like Carbon ads* and has previously bought and absorbed ad networks like Fusion Ads & Yoggrt in the past. The company has also acquired other companies like like Authentic Jobs and LaunchBit in the past. Interestingly, Digg’s tech team was not part of the acquisition.

(Note: Nuclear Bits was previously a part of the Carbon Ads network and Beautiful Pixels still runs ads from them.)

April 26, 2018 ✚ Permalink

GitHub Desktop

GitHub has introduced a new Desktop app for macOS and Windows platforms today.

Extend your GitHub workflow beyond your browser with GitHub Desktop, completely redesigned with Electron. Get a unified cross-platform experience that’s completely open source and ready to customize.

If you visit the page, the H1 tag on it reads “The new Native“.

If GitHub starts pushing for Electron apps as “native”, what hopes do we have left?

April 25, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Instagram Announces Changes to “Improve” Your Feed

Instagram has today announced that it is making some changes to the Instagram Feed. The feed has been my single biggest annoyance about the app over the last few months, so I was excited when I read the title. Not only are the ads that show up every three posts irrelevant and annoying, the out-of-order timeline is even more terrible.

Unfortunately, these changes are too little and too late.

We’ve heard it can feel unexpected when your feed refreshes and automatically bumps you to the top. So today we’re testing a “New Posts” button that lets you choose when you want to refresh, rather than it happening automatically. Tap the button and you’ll be taken to new posts at the top of feed — don’t tap, and you’ll stay where you are. We hope this makes browsing Instagram much more enjoyable.

and

Based on your feedback, we’re also making changes to ensure that newer posts are more likely to appear first in feed. With these changes, your feed will feel more fresh, and you won’t miss the moments you care about. So if your best friend shares a selfie from her vacation in Australia, it will be waiting for you when you wake up.

The first change is nice, but what is up with the second? “More likely”? Why can’t I just see the posts in the feed in the order they were posted? Goddamnit!

Facebook really needs to stop shoving its algorithms everywhere.

March 23, 2018 ✚ Permalink

WWDC 2018 — San Jose, June 4 – 8

Apple has officially announced WWDC 2018, which will take place at San Jose, California from June 4th to June 8th, 2018. The much-awaited keynote announcing the next versions of iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS will be held on Monday, June 4th at 10:30PM IST.

If you’re a developer and are looking to attend the conference, head over to Register for the ticket lottery.

March 14, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Music Streaming Service Gaana is Raising $115 Million Led by China’s Tencent

Eric Newcomer, reporting for Bloomberg:

The investment in Gamma Gaana Ltd. totals $115 million, and Times Internet Ltd., the Indian media and technology company that started the business, will also participate, said the person, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the information publicly and asked not to be identified. Tecent and Gaana didn’t respond to requests for comment. Times Internet declined to comment.

I’ve always liked Saavn, but may be it’s time to check out Gaana too.

February 28, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Cloudflare Announces its 123rd Data Center in Kathmandu, Nepal

Martin J Levy, writing on the Cloudflare blog:

We are especially excited to announce our Kathmandu data center while attending APRICOT conference, being held in Nepal this year. The event, supported by APNIC, the local Regional Internet address Registry (RIR) for the Asia-Pacific region, attracts leaders from Internet industry technical, operational, and policy-making communities. Cloudflare’s favorite part of APRICOT is the Peering Forum track on Monday.

Come for the announcement, stay for the flag dimensions’ nerdy.

February 23, 2018 ✚ Permalink