Martin Scorsese Argues Streaming Algorithms Devalue Cinema into ‘Content’

In a new essay for Harper’s magazine, Martin Scorsese argues the art of cinema is being systematically devalued and demeaned by streaming services and their algorithms, “and reduced to its lowest common denominator, ‘content.'” “Content” became a business term for all moving images: a David Lean movie, a cat video, a Super Bowl commercial, a superhero sequel, a series episode. It…

Top Banks Join Linux and Open-Source Patent Protection Group

ZDNet reports:
When it comes to defending the intellectual property (IP) rights of Linux and open-source software, global leading banks aren’t the first businesses to come to mind. Things have changed. Barclays, the London-based global corporate and investment bank, and the TD Bank Group, with its 26-million global customers, have joined the leading open-source IP defense group, the Open Invention Network (OIN)….

Miami City Council Agrees to At Least Study Mayor’s Bitcoin Proposal

Miami’s mayor Francis Suarez is trying to attract tech talent to his city. (The New York Times recently noted he’s joined by “a few venture capital influencers trying to tweet the city’s startup world into existence.”) So he’s still pushing a proposal to use bitcoin in a few city operations as “part of a larger play if you will to position…

How the NSA’s Hubris Left America Vulnerable

A new book promises “the untold story of the cyberweapons market — the most secretive, invisible, government-backed market on earth — and a terrifying first look at a new kind of global warfare.” Its author — a New York Times cybersecurity reporter — shares the book’s story about David Evenden, a former National Security Agency analyst who later worked in Abu…

Biden Commerce Pick Sees ‘No Reason’ To Lift Huawei Curbs

President Joe Biden’s nominee for Commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, said she knows of “no reason” why Huawei and other Chinese companies shouldn’t remain on a restricted trade list. From a report: Raimondo, in written questions from Senate Republicans, was asked about the company, as well as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. and others. They are on a…

Perl.com Domain Stolen, Now Using IP Address of Past Malware Campaigns

“The domain name perl.com was stolen and now points to an IP address associated with malware campaigns,” reports Bleeping Computer: Perl.com is a site owned by Tom Christiansen and has been used since 1997 to post news and articles about the Perl programming language. On January 27th, Perl programming author and Perl.com editor brian d foy tweeted that the perl.com domain…

41% of IT Leaders Believe AI Will Take Their Jobs By 2030

Dallas, TX-based cloud security firm Trend Micro interviewed 500 IT directors and managers, CIOs and CTOs — and discovered that over two-fifths of them believe they’ll be replaced by AI by 2030. ZDNet reports:
Only 9% of respondents were confident that AI would definitely not replace their job within the next decade. In fact, nearly a third (32%) said they thought the…

Stripe ‘Will No Longer Process Payments’ For Trump’s Campaign Site

“It might be easier at this point to ask which tech platforms President Donald Trump can still use,” jokes TechCrunch. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Stripe Inc. will no longer process payments for President Trump’s campaign website following last week’s riot at the Capitol, according to people familiar with the matter. The financial-technology company handles card payments for millions of online businesses…

Google Suspends Parler From App Store; Apple Gives 24-Hour Warning

New submitter yuvcifjt writes: As of Friday 6pm EST (11pm GMT), The Verge reported that Apple and Google are under pressure and receiving complaints to deplatform Parler — the social media platform favored by the right-wing and extremists — from their app stores. BuzzFeed has since broken news that Apple has served notice to Parler’s executives to implement a full moderation…

Sealed US Court Records Exposed In SolarWinds Breach

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs On Security: The ongoing breach affecting thousands of organizations that relied on backdoored products by network software firm SolarWinds may have jeopardized the privacy of countless sealed court documents on file with the U.S. federal court system, according to a memo released Wednesday by the Administrative Office (AO) of the U.S. Courts. The…