'During an interview with the Channel 4 correspondent we were able to touch his wallet with an Android phone while he was distracted and capture his credit card details.' ... 'viaForensics found that there are many cards in circulation, including recently issued cards, which are giving up the full card number, expiry, surname and initials.' Barclays security fail hits the headlines (via Tony Finch)

Just another sad story of how software patenting made a standard useless. "I had once hoped that JBIG-KIT would help with the exchange of scanned documents on the Internet, facilitate online inter-library loans, and make paper archives more accessible to users all over the world. However, the impact was minimal: no web browser dared to directly support a standardized file format covered by 23 patents, the last of which expired today. About 25 years ago, large IT research organizations discovered standards as a gold mine, a vehicle to force users to buy patent licenses, not because the technology is any good, but because it is required for compatibility. This is achieved by writing the standards very carefully such that there is no way to come up with a compatible implementation that does not require a patent license, an art that has been greatly perfected since."

featuring such codepoints as "I USED TO BE A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER K LIKE YOU THEN I TOOK AN ARROW IN THE KNEE", "BACK TO THE FUTURE", "ENTERING HYPERSPACE", "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Q TAKING A NAP", and "LOVE HOTEL". no wait, that one's real (via Tony Finch, with comments by Michael Everson!)

'The leap day bug is that the GA calculated the valid-to date by simply taking the current date and adding one to its year. That meant that any GA that tried to create a transfer certificate on leap day set a valid-to date of February 29, 2013, an invalid date that caused the certificate creation to fail.' This caused cascading failures throughout the fleet. Ouch -- should have been spotted during code review

'The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is pleased to announce that a copyright lawsuit threatening an important database of time zone information has been dismissed. The astrology software company that filed the lawsuit, Astrolabe, has also apologized and agreed to a 'covenant not to sue' going forward, which will help protect the database from future baseless legal actions and disruptions.

Software engineers around the world depend on the time zone database to make sure that time-stamps for email and other files work correctly no matter where you are. However, last September, Astrolabe filed a lawsuit against Arthur David Olson and Paul Eggert – the researchers who coordinated the database's development for decades – because the database includes information from an atlas in which Astrolabe claimed to own copyright. But facts – like what time the sun rises – are not copyrightable. EFF, along with co-counsel Adam Kessel and Olivia Nguyen at the Boston office of Fish & Richardson P.C, promptly signed on to defend Olson and Eggert and protect this essential tool. In January, EFF advised Astrolabe that Olson and Eggert would move for sanctions if Astrolabe did not withdraw its complaint. Today's dismissal followed.'

'Do intellectual property (IP) rights on existing technologies hinder subsequent
innovation? Using newly-collected data on the sequencing of the human genome by
the public Human Genome Project and the private rm Celera, this paper estimates
the impact of Celera's gene-level IP on subsequent scientic research and product
development. Genes initially sequenced by Celera were held with IP for up to two
years, but moved into the public domain once re-sequenced by the public eort.
Across a range of empirical specications, I nd evidence that Celera's IP led to
reductions in subsequent scientic research and product development on the order of
20 to 30 percent. Taken together, these results suggest that Celera's short-term IP
had persistent negative eects on subsequent innovation relative to a counterfactual
of Celera genes having always been in the public domain.' (via Tony Finch)

'For the most senior officer on board, the one who had been entrusted with the care and safety of this magnificent ship, his job was far from over. In fact the Captain had just added a new job title to his resume, that of ON SCENE COMMANDER. But apparently he didn’t realize it because he took off in a lifeboat, leaving this giant steaming pile to be picked up by the Italian police and Coast Guard who are continuing to search for survivors, and prevent looters from gaining access. The Captain didn’t just take off in a lifeboat, he left the entire scene completely.' oh dear. (via Tony Finch)

'A discussion with Vint Cerf, Van Jacobson, Nick Weaver, and Jim Gettys' -- the big guns! Great discussion (via Tony Finch)

Bayes' theorem, and 'similar statistical analysis', ruled inadmissible in UK law courts (via Tony Finch)

'The postwoman is paid a pittance to deliver corporate mail. She hasn’t done her job well, yet so few people have complained about missed deliveries that she hasn’t been found out. Across the world, postal services are being altered like this: optimised to deliver the maximum amount of unwanted mail at the minimum cost to businesses. In the internet age private citizens are sending less mail than they used to, but that’s only part of the story of postal decline. The price of driving down the cost of bulk mailing for a handful of big organisations is being paid for by the replacement of decently paid postmen with casual labour and the erosion of daily deliveries.' (via Tony Finch)

OCSP doesn't work -- the browser vendors have failed to implement it safely

YA make-replacement build system. the thread is better than the linked article, btw

At least one of the sites seized by DHS was an mp3 blog which posted authorised, promotional mp3s, sent from record label VPs and artists -- ie. none of the supposedly "infringing" files, actually were infringing. (via Tony Finch)

more good Bloom Filter tips. he says: 'I take a slightly different tack, starting with a target population in mind which determines the size of the filter. Also there's a minor error regarding performance in the corte.si post. You only need to calculate two hash functions, and use a linear combination of them to index the Bloom filter. This simplifies the coding a lot, and if hash calculation dominates filter indexing, it's also a lot faster.'

by Ole Tange. pretty extensive, if inscrutable (via Tony Finch)

ouch - master key for HDMI now available, if true (via tony finch)

incredible. Almost every single modern camera capable of recording video now requires that you obtain a license from MPEG-LA to use recorded footage for commercial purposes. These clauses are currently not enforced, but could be. Horrifying (via Tony Finch)

from David Welton. what, the lack of support for GNOME UI standards was *deliberate*? bad choice if so

a clever HTTP session-management trick (via Tony Finch)

John Levine gets DNS*Ls standardized, at last. we should really check SpamAssassin to see if it's compliant, I guess ;)

well-written, and it's good to see version control listed right at the top of the list. But quite dead; interesting for historical reasons only at this stage