This week a vulnerability was discovered in 28 antivirus programs, the Oscars announced new guidelines for streaming films to qualify, a US Senator is pushing for a criminal antitrust investigation into Amazon, NASA announces commercial moon lander and, ICANN makes a decision about .org. Like every week there’s more in the Other News section and an update on Let’s Talk Tech.
symlink bugs found in 28 antivirus apps
On Sunday, security researchers from RACK911 Labs announced in a report that they discovered a symlink vulnerability in 28 antivirus apps.
The vulnerability allows attackers to delete files required by antivirus software or OS files, it could cause the computer to crash or render it unusable.
Symlinks are some of the oldest bugs in the books.
Oscars to allow streaming-only movies next year
On Tuesday TAoAaS announced changes to their guidelines “temporarily” allowing streaming movies to qualify for the Oscars.
For streaming movies to be eligible for the Oscars they have to have been originally planned to make theatrical releases that would regularly qualify they also have to be posted to the academy proprietary streaming service.
Senator pushes for DOJ criminal antitrust investigation into Amazon
On Tuesday US Senator Josh Hawley sent a letter (probably more like an email but its government and government usually ahs archaic requirements) to the DOJ requesting that they look into Amazon causing them of criminal antitrust. Those charges are quite serious and could bring amazon quite a doosey.
Criminal Antitrust could bring on quite serious consequences including quoting the FTC “up to $100 million for a corporation, along with up to 10 years in prison”. and “Under federal law, the maximum fine may be increased to twice the amount the conspirators gained from the illegal acts or twice the money lost by the victims of the crime, if either of those amounts is over $100 million”.
That means theoretically the judge would be able to increase the fine to whatever they deem necessary (I’m not a lawyer so take that last part with a grain of salt).
NASA HLS Contract
In a teleconference, NASA announced that they selected SpaceX, Blue Origin and, Dyenetics to move on to the next round of selection towards the use of their lander systems for Artemis. This selection doesn’t mean that they have been selected for use, they are now going to be in a 10-month audit period to asses the processes Blue Origin entered their previously Blue Moon lander which was announced by Jeff Bezos last October. SpaceX entered Starship (this isn’t the entire launch system just the 2nd stage).
.org
On Thursday ICANN announced that they have decided not to approve the sale of the .org TLD. In a blog post, they said that they made this decision because the PRIR is “an entity that is bound to serve the interests of its corporate stakeholders, and which has no meaningful plan to protect or serve the .org community.
This controversy started when The Internet Society the organization that runs the TLD announced that they were planning to sell it. This came after PIR promised that they wouldn’t institute price hikes and wouldn’t censor. It was thought that the decision to sell was mode so that they could do those things.
Other News
This week YouTube started showing fact-checking info in search results, PUBG is now on Stadia, Facebook announced a Graduation Event and, Twitter turns off SMS service.
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I hope to finally get an episode of Let’s Talk Tech this week.