A programmer using Delphi in 2017, the future of Btrfs, and more news

The UK’s anti-encryption push and the security corner round out the news. Read on...

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Delphi, in the current year? It’s more likely than you’d think. So sayeth the software developer behind the Code Velocity blog in this post. What’s Delphi? It’s a programing language originally developed by Borland. Who’s Borland? Exactly.

Finally, a backup solution for /r/datahoarder. Sony and IBM have announced the development of a magnetic tape system that can store 330 TB on a single cassette. No word on pricing, but assume it’s more in the if-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it category.

Another salary negotiation blog post. This one is framed around and makes some special consideration for introverts. It’s worth a read, if only for the colorful metaphors and to read the comments to see how much the author’s words resonate with many programmers.

Goodbye, Btrfs? Btrfs (b-tree file system, pronounced ‘butter fs’) is being deprecated and removed from RHEL. This likely signals that the nascent ZFS competitor will have a hard time getting widespread adoption. Have you used btrfs? What did you think?

Comcast’s false advertising is finally catching up to them. Two minutes’ hate against telecoms: Comcast (and every other telecom) tacks on a bunch of made-up garbage fees below the line to everyone, and Comcast has finally been called to task for it in court, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to squirm out of it this time. Let’s also not forget how they raise the rates of these profit-enhancement charges even while subscribers are allegedly under ‘contract’ with the telecoms - who have the best of both worlds: you can’t leave because of the contract (and probably because you don’t have any meaningful competition to choose from), but they can increase the price via these fees whenever they want.

Putting the ‘fun’ in crowdfunding. Hackaday writes about a project on Kickstarter making false claims about releasing the smallest Arduino-compatible board. This was really just a way for me to segue into what should become a regular feature: most ridiculous crowdfunded project of the week – this week’s winner being “SMALT”, a cloud-connected salt shaker. Really. You can even integrate it with Amazon’s Alexa.

Electronic voting remains insecure, film at 11. Yeah. All the machines suck, they all have various vulnerabilities. Let’s all go back to paper (maybe with optical-scan ballots, like my state of New York uses). It’s worth noting that some of the attacks mentioned in the posts aren’t entirely feasible during actual elections (due to physical security features like seals, poll workers, and nice men and women with guns monitoring the poll site,) but several of them are, or could be done to the machines in advance of the election.

Big Brother would like you to stop using encryption. Amber Rudd, the United Kingdom’s Home Secretary, was interviewed by the BBC, where she declared encrypted messaging “a problem,” and threatened service providers with new laws if they didn’t begin prior restraint for ‘extremism’. Her position is the default government-maximalist one of “encryption is fine, it’s just effective encryption we don’t like,” if you’re curious to learn without watching the interview. The not-at-all-Orwellian “Global internet Forum to Counter Terrorism” (and save the children and puppies, too) is Rudd’s new initiative to ban encryption, and it’s torn apart in this blog post from Aral Balkan.

In the security corner this week: breaking air gaps via the power cord, the Internet of fishy things, and ‘perverse’ hidden Mac malware.

• In news I’m certain surprised absolutely nobody, someone exfiltrated data from an ‘airgapped’ computer via the power cable. The post detailing how is an amazing read with lots of fun math, oscilloscope graphs, and in-depth explanations of how no data is safe.
• This isn’t a movie plot, even if it is a movie-plot threat. An internet-connected fish tank (yes, you read that correctly) was hacked and used as a jumping-off point to explore the rest of the network by hackers attacking a casino in “North America”. Regrettably few details in the post, unfortunately. My take is that they obviously should have airgapped the fish tank. Water gapped? Whatever.
• This fruitfly is a RAT. Malware called “Fruitfly” attacked around 400 Macs. The most interesting part of the attack is that this malware may have been active for nearly a decade. That’s about all we know about it, other than the malware’s capability, but that’s enough to be noteworthy in my book.

Thanks for reading – as always, if you have feedback, or think there’s something I should cover next time, leave a comment!

Cover photo: This isn't the same Delphi behind the programming language, but you try finding pictures of Delphi. Image ? Carlos Osorio / AP