Internet Relay Chat (IRC) turned 30 this August!

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) turned 30 this August.

The venerable text-only chat system was first developed in 1988 by a Finnish computer scientist named Jarkko Oikarinen. Oikarinen couldn't have known at the time just how his creation would affect the lives of people around the world, but it became one of the key early tools that kept Ars Technica running as a virtual workplace—it even lead to love and marriage.

To honor IRC's 30th birthday, we're foregoing the cake and flowers in favor of some memories. Three long-time Ars staffers share some of their earliest IRC interactions, which remind us that the Internet has always been simultaneously wonderful and kind of terrible.

read more:
https://arstechnica.com/staff/2018/10/internet-relay-chat-turns-30-and-we-remember-how-it-changed-our-lives/

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This Windows file may be secretly hoarding your passwords and emails

A little-known Windows feature will create a file that stores text extracted from all the emails and plaintext-files found on your PC, which sometimes may reveal passwords or private conversations.
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If you're one of the people who own a stylus or touchscreen-capable Windows PC, then there's a high chance there's a file on your computer that has slowly collected sensitive data for the past months or even years.

This file is named WaitList.dat, and according to Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) expert Barnaby Skeggs, this file is only found on touchscreen-capable Windows PCs where the user has enabled the handwriting recognition feature that automatically translates stylus/touchscreen scribbles into formatted text.

read more: https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-windows-file-may-be-secretly-hoarding-your-passwords-and-emails/

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The EU has approved a copyright law that could change the internet as we know it

The EU has approved a copyright law that could change the internet as we know it
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The EU parliament voted to approve controversial copyright reforms that have been in the works since 2016 and could transform the internet for users in Europe and beyond.

The Copyright Directive is meant to protect content creators and has received strong support from some in the artistic and media communities. But its critics—including internet pioneers as well as tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple—argue that the reforms would hamper the free flow of information, turn tech companies into content police, and lead to the web’s ossification.

src: https://qz.com/1387466/article-11-and-article-13-the-eu-copyright-law-that-could-overhaul-the-internet/

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Google remotely changed the settings on a bunch of phones running Android 9 Pie

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/14/17861150/google-battery-saver-android-9-pie-remote-settings-change

"The company posted a message on Reddit last night acknowledging “an internal experiment to test battery saving features that was mistakenly rolled out to more users than intended.” So Google had remotely — and accidentally — changed a phone setting for a bunch of real-world customers"

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Google remotely changed the settings on a bunch of phones running Android 9 Pie