2014-09-25T07:28:53Z via theshi.re To: Public
Miss a Payment? Good Luck Moving That Car
he thermometer showed a 103.5-degree fever, and her 10-year-old’s asthma was flaring up. Mary Bolender, who lives in Las Vegas, needed to get her daughter to an emergency room, but her 2005 Chrysler van would not start.
The cause was not a mechanical problem — it was her lender.
Ms. Bolender was three days behind on her monthly car payment. Her lender, C.A.G. Acceptance of Mesa, Ariz., remotely activated a device in her car’s dashboard that prevented her car from starting. Before she could get back on the road, she had to pay more than $389, money she did not have that morning in March.
“I felt absolutely helpless,” said Ms. Bolender, a single mother who stopped working to care for her daughter. It was not the only time this happened: Her car was shut down that March, once in April and again in June.
This new technology is bringing auto loans — and Wall Street’s version of Big Brother — into the lives of people with credit scores battered by the financial downturn.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/miss-a-payment-good-luck-moving-that-car/?_php=true&_type=blogs&src=twr&_r=0
#debt #privacy #tracking #surveillance #automobile #car #loan #bigbrother #wallstreet #bankers
2014-09-18T12:17:27Z via theshi.re To: Public
Mfa?
Sorry, this is from a link to Friendica. It's connected to my Facebook account. When I like a page it pops up as a post and gets cross-posted. I have to tweak it when I get the chance.2014-09-16T19:57:34Z via theshi.re To: Public
2014-09-15T02:57:38Z via theshi.re To: Public
D-A-D "I Want What She's Got"
http://youtu.be/riHdzZ5_K6UHello all D-A-D friends! D-A-D has been nominated to the Special Audience Award @ this year's Danish Music Awards. Please vote for them if they have given yo...
2014-09-11T12:43:58Z via theshi.re To: Public
US customs bans famous French cheeses
A silly and annoying rule change by US customs has banned famous French cheeses.
Another silly and annoying US customs rule is the one that prohibits import of all meat products, even soup mixes. Yes, it is conceivable that they could carry a prion disease — but nobody is going to feed the soup to cattle.
2014-09-06T20:16:48Z via theshi.re To: Public
2014-09-04T23:57:06Z via theshi.re To: Public
Anyone else have a job which allows you to read?
Anyone else have a job which allows you to read? • /r/booksI'm a CNC machinist and my machine can have cycle times of a few hours. I use this time to read so it's the perfect job for me. The night shift is bet...
2014-09-04T23:57:05Z via theshi.re To: Public
2014-09-04T23:57:02Z via theshi.re To: Public
Important Life Lessons We Learned From Childrens Books
Story-for-you.com:Important Life Lessons We Learned From Children's BooksImportant Life Lessons We Learned From Children's Books
2014-09-04T23:16:59Z via theshi.re To: Public
Paleontologists just unveiled the dinosaur Dreadnoughtus, an 85-foot-long titan whose fossil is far and away the most massive ever discovered.
New Dino May Be Largest Land AnimalAn international team of paleontologists have just uncovered the coolest dinosaur of this decade, and the biggest fossil ever of a single organism. Meet Dreadnoughtus.
2014-08-24T04:35:15Z via theshi.re To: Public
2014-08-23T21:38:30Z via theshi.re To: Public
Backup Service Kicks Customer Over “Infringing” Torrent Files
Most people who regularly use a computer know that it’s wise to have all critical data backed up. Whether it’s on a local hard drive or in the cloud, a copy can come in handy if something breaks.
Zoolz is one of the many commercial backup solutions. The company services regular customers but also business clients including Microsoft, Dell, the BBC and the Washington post.
Zoolz allows customers to backup their files in the cloud, including entire hard-drives. This is all done privately and securely, the company claims, with zero knowledge of what’s being transferred.
This zero knowledge claim has been called into doubt recently as one of Zoolz’ customers, Ryan Gallagher, had his account terminated after the company found several .torrent files in his backups. Gallagher didn’t store any infringing media, but just 1 Megabyte worth of old metadata.
Apparently, scanning for pirated filenames is standard practice at Zoolz, which is also explained in the product agreement.
“If Metadata checking (i.e. file names) reveals that an account has content relating to video piracy, software piracy or any copyrighted data with the intent to distribute (i.e. torrents) the account will be immediately terminated,” it reads.
And this is indeed what happened. Zoolz promptly notified the customer that his account would be terminated, and he was given a few days to transfer over a terabyte of data to a safer place.
“My account and all data (1.3TB) was nuked, they would not budge on deleting specific ‘prohibited file names’ saying they had no way to do it. It’s a complete waste of time and bandwidth,” former Zoolz customer Gallagher comments.
While there is nothing wrong with strict anti-piracy policies, deleting an entire account over a few small pieces of metadata goes pretty far. The .torrent files Zoolz found only reference pirated files, nothing more.
And it got even worse. When Geoff Akerlund of the Backup Review site confronted the company with its drastic actions, he was accused of supporting illegal behavior himself.
“We are sad to see you side with illegal behavior, the torrents could mean that the user has the actual media files, and downloading any media file without any proof of ownership is considered illegal,” Zoolz told him.
The backup service claims that the torrents “could” indicate that the user has a copy of the files as well, and that without proof of ownership terminating the account is warranted.
Aside from this rude behavior and terminating users accounts because they store non-infringing .torrent files, one has to wonder what business a backup provider has snooping through the computers of their customers.
In any case, Zoolz has “zero knowledge” of proper customer service.
Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.
2014-08-22T22:15:33Z via theshi.re To: Public
2014-08-21T04:37:36Z via theshi.re To: Public
2014-08-21T04:37:36Z via theshi.re To: Public
2013-08-05T17:13:02Z via Impeller To: Public
Finally discovering the wonders of rsync.
Stephen Sekula likes this.
