Ethan Black @golemwire@librem.one

@briankrebs also, pick up this warning our grandparents left for us. Update it, air it 24/7 https://youtu.be/vGAqYNFQdZ4?si=6yeE1Zp2iVr38pTF

The Federal Trade Commission has hit Avast with a $16.5 million fine over allegations that it told customers it would protect their security and privacy but then gave data about their browsing to a subsidiary called Jumpshot.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/02/ftc-says-avast-promised-privacy-pirated-consumers-data-treasure

The issue came to light in Dec. 2019, when Mozilla removed four Firefox extensions made by Avast and its subsidiary AVG after receiving reports the extensions were harvesting user data and browsing histories.

From the FTC's presser:

"Avast rebranded Jumpshot as an analytics company, which advertised that its “[m]ore than 100 million online consumers worldwide” would give Jumpshot’s clients “unique insights to make better business decisions.”

"Jumpshot further claimed to give its clients the ability to “see where your audience is going before and after they visit your site or your competitors’ sites, and even track those who visit a specific URL.” Of course, Jumpshot’s source of that massive amount of data about people’s browsing information – some of it highly personal in nature – that it sold to advertising companies, data brokers, individual brands, search engine optimizing outfits, and others looking for detailed information about consumers’ browsing histories was Avast, the company that pitched its products as a solution to intrusive online surveillance."

"According to the complaint, Jumpshot provided its clients with “extraordinary detail regarding how consumers navigated the Internet, including each webpage visited, precise timestamp, the type of device and browser, and the city, state, and country.” What’s more, most of the data included a unique and persistent device identifier, which allowed Jumpshot and its clients to trace individuals across multiple domains over time. The FTC says that included in the information Jumpshot sold was data about consumers’ visits to sites about religious matters, political candidates, health concerns like breast cancer, jobs at secure military facilities, student loan application information, dating interests, and sites of an adult nature. The complaint puts it this way: “The vast majority of consumers would not know that the Avast Software would surveil their every move on the Internet or that their browsing information might be sold to more than 100 third parties and stored indefinitely, in granular, re-identifiable form.”

https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-removes-avast-and-avg-extensions-from-add-on-portal-over-snooping-claims/

@archlinux @fedora

Plasma 6 optimized for Wayland gaming, plus compositor crash recovery https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/09/plasma-6-optimized-for-wayland-gaming-plus-compositor-crash-recovery/

#Linux #KDE #Wayland

Thank you for bringing us the Kubuntu Focus line of computers! We love to see systems that come with Linux preinstalled.
https://kfocus.org/

To: @kubuntu
From: Fedora

#ILoveFS #Kubuntu #Ubuntu #FedoraLoveFS

These rows are perfectly horizontal and are not moving. A mind-bending anomalous motion variation of the Café wall illusion by Akiyoshi Kitaoka.

Source: http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/akitaoka/motion30e.html

Oh, this is exquisite.

Air Canada must honor refund policy invented by airline’s chatbot

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-honor-refund-policy-invented-by-airlines-chatbot/

@molly0xfff "Stract’s About page says “if we ever become evil (maybe by changing our motto) please take our code and start a competitor. The fact that you have this ability will make sure that our values will always be aligned with our users."

This is probably one of the top reasons why I love #OpenSource.

#HaikuOS: The #OpenSource #BeOS You Can Daily Drive In 2024

https://hackaday.com/2024/01/15/haiku-os-the-open-source-beos-you-can-daily-drive-in-2024/

The Linux desktop is a house owned by an amateur DIY home improvement person. Floor boards squeak, the back door doesn't latch unless you close it a certain way, you have to jiggle the toilet lever, and there's tape on a light switch controlling an outlet that needs constant power.

The homeowner doesn't fix these things, because they know to jiggle the lever, how to close the door. Working around these flaws has become second nature so they don't even realize they are doing it.

1/2

Take a few minutes to read this important blog post from @pluralistic. He got scammed, and he describes what happened. https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

We're heading into a time when the scammers are gaining the upper hand, no matter how good we are at trying to avoid being taken by experts.

That's the thing: They are experts.

Get ready to do business less conveniently in the near future.

We just released critical security patches for versions 4.1, 4.2, nightly, and the already discontinued 3.5 and 4.0.

If you are using nightly, you can upgrade to the `4.3.0-nightly.2024-02-02-security` tag to get the patch.

Please upgrade as soon as possible!

Time-lapse video of a flight through the eye of Hurricane Florence in September 2018, captured by NOAA's Lockheed WP-3D Orion nicknamed 'Kermit'.