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Old 07-12-22, 07:12 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 10th, 22

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"Cyberdeviancy" – Europol


































Early Edition



December 10th, 2022















Governments Seek Ways to Avert Quantum's Encryption Apocalypse
Sam Sabin

The U.S. is barreling toward a quantum computing future, but until it’s here, it's unknown if all the investments and time spent preparing the country’s cybersecurity will pay off.

The big picture: Experts have long feared quantum computing would allow foreign adversaries and hackers to crack the otherwise unbreakable encryption standards that protect most online data — leaving everything from online payment systems to government secrets vulnerable.

• Although a quantum computer isn't expected until 2030, at the earliest, updating current encryption standards will take just as long, creating a high-stakes race filled with unanswerable questions for national security and cybersecurity officials alike.

As scientists, academics and international policymakers attended the first-ever Quantum World Congress conference in Washington this week, alarmism around the future of secure data was undercut by foundational questions of what quantum computing will mean for the world.

• "We don't even know what we don't know about what quantum can do," said Michael Redding, chief technology officer at Quantropi, during a panel about cryptography at the Quantum World Congress.

Catch up quick: While classical computers rely on a binary of ones and zeros to run calculations, quantum computing harnesses the principles of quantum physics — which argues a particle can be in two places at once — to complete more complex calculations than a classical computer could ever do.

• Those calculations include cracking the equations that underpin the encryption standards that protect most online data today.

Threat level: Some governments are believed to have already started stealing enemies’ encrypted secrets now, so they can unlock them as soon as quantum computing is available.

• "It's the single-largest economic national-security issue we have ever faced as a Western society," said Denis Mandich, chief technology officer at Qrypt and a former U.S. intelligence official, at this week's conference. "We don't know what happens if they actually decrypt, operationalize and monetize all the data that they already have."

Between the lines: Whether the new post-quantum cybersecurity protocols governments and researchers are developing will be able to fend off quantum is tricky, if not impossible, to guarantee: It’s hard to prepare for a technology that still doesn’t exist.
• Current projects researching how to modernize encryption are based on insights into how adversaries have broken current encryption algorithms in past attacks and building on top of that.

The intrigue: That isn’t stopping the U.S. from investing even more resources into developing and protecting against quantum computing.

• President Joe Biden signed a national security memo in May ordering federal agencies to take inventory of all use cases for encryption in their systems. Congress has already poured at least $1.2 billion into quantum computing research and development.
• Cities and states are also stepping up: Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Wednesday became the first U.S. city to stand up a commercially available fiber optic network capable of handling quantum technologies.

Yes, but: A lot of post-quantum encryption research is happening in tandem with quantum development projects, so researchers have a more informed understanding of what they could be protecting against.

• "The way to do things efficiently is to do things in parallel and have the different components talking to each other and guiding each other," David Awschalom, director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange and senior scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory, tells Axios.

What’s next: All eyes are on the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology as it prepares to release a second set of post-quantum encryption tools for security experts to test and analyze.

• Companies should also consider hiring quantum-specific security teams that can start modernizing their systems for a post-quantum world, Redding said.

https://www.axios.com/2022/12/02/qua...-cybersecurity





Risky Online Behaviour ‘Almost Normalised’ Among Young People, Says Study

EU-funded survey of people aged 16-19 finds one in four have trolled someone – while UK least ‘cyberdeviant’ of nine countries
Dan Milmo

Risky and criminal online behaviour is in danger of becoming normalised among a generation of young people across Europe, according to EU-funded research that found one in four 16- to 19-year-olds have trolled someone online and one in three have engaged in digital piracy.

An EU-funded study found evidence of widespread criminal, risky and delinquent behaviour among the 16-19 age group in nine European countries including the UK.

A survey of 8,000 young people found that one in four have tracked or trolled someone online, one in eight have engaged in online harassment, one in 10 have engaged in hate speech or hacking, one in five have engaged in sexting and one in three have engaged in digital piracy. It also found that four out of 10 have watched pornography.

Julia Davidson, a co-author of the research and professor of criminology at the University of East London (UEL), said risky and criminal online behaviour was becoming almost normalised among a generation of European young people.

“The research indicates that a large proportion of young people in the EU are engaging in some form of cybercrime, to such an extent that the conduct of low-level crimes online and online risk-taking has become almost normalised,” she said.

Davidson, who led the research with her UEL colleague Prof Mary Aiken, said the research findings pointed to more male participation in risky or criminal behaviour, with nearly three-quarters of males admitting to some form of cybercrime or online risk-taking, compared with 65% of females.

The survey asked young people about 20 types of behaviour online, including looking at pornographic material, posting revenge porn, making self-generated sexual images and posting hate speech.

According to the survey findings, just under half of participants engaged in behaviour that could be considered criminal in most jurisdictions, such as hacking, non-consensual sharing of intimate images or “money muling” – where someone receives money from a third party and passes it on, in a practice linked to the proceeds of cybercrime.

The survey, conducted by a research agency with previously used sample groups, found that half of 16- to 19-year-olds spent four to seven hours a day online, with nearly four out of 10 spending more than eight hours a day online, primarily on phones. It found that the top five platforms among the group were YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok and Snapchat.

The nine countries in the survey were the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Romania. The country with the highest proportion of what the study calls “cyberdeviancy” – a mix of criminal and non-criminal but risky behaviour – was Spain at 75%, followed by Romania, the Netherlands and Germany at about 72%. The UK was bottom at 58%.

The study was undertaken in collaboration with the cybercrime centre at Europol, an EU body that works with crime agencies across the economic bloc, and financed by the EU’s Horizon fund. It calls for greater education of young people and parents about what is potentially harmful and risky behaviour online.

The findings have been published against a backdrop of landmark online regulation in the EU and the UK. In the UK, the online safety bill, which returns to parliament this week, would create a number of new criminal offences. They include encouraging self-harm online and sharing deepfake pornography, meaning images that have been manipulated to look like someone without their consent.

Aiken said: “The online safety bill is potentially groundbreaking and addresses key issues faced by every country. It could act as a catalyst in holding the tech industry to account. The bill sets out a raft of key measures to protect children and young people; however, our findings suggest that there should be more focus on accountability and prevention, particularly in the context of young people’s online offending.”

The EU has just adopted the Digital Services Act, which requires large online platforms and Google to take action against risks such as cyber violence against women and online harms to children.
https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ple-says-study





Uncomfirmed

N. Korea Publicly Executes Two Teenagers for Distributing S. Korean Movies
bl/kb

North Korea has executed three teenagers by firing squad, two for watching and distributing South Korean movies, and one for killing his stepmother. The alleged crimes committed by the teens, estimated to be between 16 to 17, were equally evil, authorities told terrified residents, who were forced to witness the execution.

According to witnesses, Hyesan residents were gathered in groups at the runway of the Heyesan airfield. The authorities put the teenage students in front of the public, announced their crime of distributing foreign media, sentenced them to death, and immediately shot them.

The executions occurred after authorities held public meetings to warn the public they would crack down on crimes involving foreign media, especially from more prosperous and democratic South Korea.

Executions of this kind are not unheard of in North Korea. Authorities will typically use executions to terrify people into behaving in the way they want them to.

The distribution of South Korean and Western movies, music, and TV shows has become increasingly popular in North Korea in recent years. People distribute the media among themselves after smugglers bring it into the country from China.

There is a growing concern in North Korea that South Korean culture, which is viewed as decadent and anti-revolutionary, is influencing North Korean youth. There have been reports over the years of authorities confiscating smartphones at random and punishing violators harshly.

According to a Hyesan source, citizens caught watching foreign movies will be sent to disciplinary labour centres. Those who are caught again will be sent to a correctional labour camp for five years, along with their parents, who must assume responsibility for their children's improper education.

If they are caught distributing or selling South Korean movies, however, they may be sentenced to death, even if they are minors.

Despite intensive control and crackdowns to eradicate “reactionary” thought and culture, young people continue to watch South Korean movies secretly. In order to reign terror throughout the community, the authorities have resorted to public executions.

Law enforcement agencies have ordered swift justice be served to people accused of possessing or distributing “impure” recordings and publications.
source: Radio Free Asia, Liberty Times
https://tvpworld.com/64892532/n-kore...-korean-movies





The End of AM Radio in Your Car? Not if Ed Markey has Anything to Say About it
Gwen Egan

AM radio in cars isn’t going anywhere while Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey is around.

In a letter he sent to more than 20 car manufacturers, Markey outlined why he thinks AM radio is important and asked that they continue to have AM radios in future models, including electric vehicles known as EVs.

“Broadcast AM radio remains a crucial, cost-free source of news, sports, and weather, and, more importantly, is an essential medium for public safety officials — including the president — to communicate with the public during emergencies,” he wrote in the letter.

Markey cited statistics from the Pew Research Center News Platform Fact Sheet from September 2022 which said 47% of Americans receive their news from the radio.

Some EV manufacturers have raised concerns even as far back as 2016 about how the battery power of an EV can interfere with AM radio signals. However, Markey addressed these concerns saying, “car manufacturers appear to have developed innovative solutions to this problem.”
https://www.boston.com/news/local-ne...-say-about-it/





Free Over-the-Air TV Is Getting Even Better

NextGen TV is a huge upgrade for free over-the-air TV. Here's why.
Geoffrey Morrison

Cutting the cable cord is easier than ever, thanks to the growing options of NextGen TV. Sports, local news, network TV shows and more, all for free. An inexpensive antenna is all you'll need to get get ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS stations in most major cities across the country. Over-the-air TV, aka the way most Americans got their TV for most of the latter half of the 20th century, has gotten a huge upgrade.

NextGen TV, formerly known as ATSC 3.0, is continuing to roll out across the US. It's already widely available, with stations throughout the country broadcasting in the new standard. There are many new TVs with compatible tuners plus several stand-alone tuners to add NextGen to just about any TV.

As the name suggests, NextGen TV is the next generation of over-the-air broadcasts, replacing or supplementing the free HD broadcasts we've had for over two decades. NextGen not only improves on HDTV, but adds the potential for new features like free over-the-air 4K and HDR, though those aren't yet widely available.

Even so, the image quality with NextGen is likely better than what you're used to from streaming or even cable/satellite. If you already have an antenna and watch HD broadcasts, the reception you get with NextGen might be better, too. So here's everything you need to know and even deeper dives if you want to learn more.

What is NextGen TV?

In the before times, there was NTSC. This was the broadcasting standard in the US for over half a century. It was officially replaced in 2009 by ATSC, aka HDTV. Now ATSC itself is being replaced in many markets by NextGen TV, which was formerly called ATSC 3.0 (there was no 2.0).

NextGen TV offers a variety of new technologies, including the ability to broadcast 4K, HDR and more. Because of how it works, you'll likely get better reception if you're far from the TV tower.

The short version is: NextGen is free over-the-air television with potentially more channels and better image quality than older over-the-air broadcasts.

Where is NextGen TV?

Most major cities carry NextGen TV stations, as do a lot of smaller ones, with more rolling out every month. The transition to NextGen is voluntary, but so far many stations in most markets are embracing the change. A lot of that has to do with groundwork that was laid during the digital transition to HDTV. Since everything is digital already, upgrading to NextGen doesn't have the same high cost that switching from analog NTSC to digital ATSC (1.0) did. There are also new ways stations can make money, which certainly softens the blow.

You can find out what stations are already active in your area at watchnextgentv.com/markets.

What do I need for NextGen TV?

All you need is a NextGen tuner and an antenna. If you're shopping for a new TV, many current models have built-in NextGen TV tuners. This includes many models from LG, Sony, HiSense and Samsung. There are a handful of external tuners as well, though not as many as you might think -- at least, for now.

The antenna part is fairly easy: There are a lot of inexpensive options. If you have an antenna from the HDTV days, it will likely work just fine.

Will it have my favorite show?

This is the ultimate question, isn't it? What good is free content if it's not content you want to watch? NextGen is a broadcast standard that typically covers the "broadcasters" of yore (namely ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS). These aren't the only channels you'll find, but these will be the core offerings in most areas.

The specifics, however, are more complex. Not every station in your area will have converted to NextGen, though conveniently if you have the antenna and tuner, you should be able to get all the "ATSC 1.0" (aka old-school HDTV) broadcasts. So you should be able to get all the major broadcasters for free over the air one way or another.

In many areas, however, you'll be able to get much more than those. Most stations run multiple sub-channels, which in turn run different programming under the same "channel" banner. Plus, there are smaller broadcasters with varied content. Will you be able to watch Stranger Things over the air? Almost certainly not, but This Is Us, Chicago PD, Grey's Anatomy and most major sports are all free over the air.

A few cities, such as Boise, Idaho, Portland, Oregon, and Denver, Colorado, have Evoca, a sort of hybrid service that combines over-the-air with some pay channels like the NFL Network, Bloomberg and others. This is ideal for markets that might not have many channel options while simultaneously having internet speeds too slow for streaming. You might be surprised how quickly internet speeds and availability drop once you get outside of many cities.

Does this mean I need to watch ads again?

Nothing is ever truly free, right? In this case, you pay with your time by watching ads. Back in the olden days, aka before streaming, there were things called DVRs that recorded programming to a hard drive for later watching. You could fast-forward through the commercials. It was A Thing. And it still is if you pay for cable or satellite TV.

There are a couple of NextGen DVRs already, and some of the other tuners have the ability to record on local or networked hard drives. So if you don't want to watch 20 minutes of every hour guessing what a prescription drug does based on its possible side effects, look for one of those.

For now, check if it's available in your area, or at least, when it's coming: watchnextgentv.com/markets. For more info including how it all works, check out Free antenna TV is getting an upgrade and it might be in your town already.
https://www.cnet.com/news/nextgen-tv...-already-here/





Holiday TV: New Musicals, Romcoms, Specials Arrive in Flurry
Alicia Rancilio

It’s December and pretty much every network and streaming service seemingly has a show aimed at spreading holiday cheer. For those looking to skip re-runs of Christmases past, there’s a bounty of fresh shows and specials targeted to traditionalists, romantics and family friendly entertainment.

For those hungry for more, or just plain hungry, this guide has you covered on some of the notable musicals, romcoms, animated and cooking shows airing and streaming throughout the holiday season.

All times are Eastern Standard Time.

______

ALREADY AVAILABLE

“ Santa Camp,” HBO Max. This documentary follows the non-profit New England Santa Society, made up of more than 100 professional Christmas performers, who decide to tackle the lack of diversity among Santa stand-ins at their annual summer camp in New Hampshire. The group enlists a Black Santa, a Santa with a disability, and a transgender Santa to help make playing Santa more inclusive.

“ The 12 Days of Christmas Eve,” Lifetime. Kelsey Grammer co-stars opposite his daughter, Spencer Grammer, in this fresh take on “A Christmas Carol,” as a successful businessman who is so caught up in success, he forgets about what really matters in life, family. When he gets into a car accident on Christmas Eve, he gets 12 tries at redoing the day over to make things right.

“ Christmas with You,” Netflix. Freddie Prinze Jr. plays a single dad and music teacher named Miguel, whose daughter Cristina is a massive fan of the pop star Angelina (played by Aimee Garcia). What Cristina doesn’t know is that Angelina’s career is in jeopardy, and she is in danger of being dropped by her record label if she doesn’t release a new hit soon. When Angelina stumbles upon a video Cristina posted online of her singing one of Angelina’s songs, she decides to go meet her for an ego boost. Angelina meets Miguel and offers to help him — and herself — by writing a holiday song with him.

HOLIDAY SOUNDTRACK

″ CMA Country Christmas,” ABC, Thursday, Dec. 8 at 9 p.m. Country artists including Maren Morris, Old Dominion and Dan + Shay perform holiday classics in this Nashville-filmed special hosted by Carly Pearce.

“O Holy Night: Christmas with The Tabernacle Choir,” PBS and BYUtv, Dec. 19., Broadway’s Megan Hilty, also known for her role on the TV series “Smash,” leads this annual concert with the beloved Tabernacle Choir that was recorded in 2021 to air this year. Actor Neal McDonough narrates.

“Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas To All!” CBS, Tuesday, Dec. 20., Mariah Carey first took the Christmas Queen crown in 1994 with her hit single “All I Want for Christmas is You” that’s still in heavy rotation today, and she has no desire to give it back. Her latest seasonal offering is a two-hour holiday concert filmed at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

MISTLETOE ENVY

“ A Christmas Open House,” HGTV, Wednesday, Dec. 7 at 10 p.m., Katie Stevens leads this holiday romance with special guest stars, Ben and Erin Napier, who restore homes on HGTV’s “Home Town.” The couple makes their acting debut as artists in Atlanta who help a local home stager (Stevens) and a realtor (Victor Rasuk) prepare a home for selling.

“ Candy Coated Christmas,” Food Network, Tuesday, Dec. 8 at 10 p.m., Molly McCook stars in this original holiday romance film featuring Food Network star, Ree Drummond.

″ The Sound of Christmas, ” BET and BET Her, Friday, Dec. 9 at 9 p.m., Ne-Yo, Serayah, and Draya Michele star in this film about a music teacher who meets a wealthy widower with a money-hungry, status-obsessed girlfriend and sparks fly.

“ A Christmas Fumble,” OWN, Saturday, Dec. 10 at 9 p.m., Eva Marcille stars as a crisis manager who takes on a new client hoping to dodge a scandal (played by Devale Ellis.) The only problem: The two used to date making for a complicated assignment.

“ The Holiday Sitter, ” Hallmark Channel, Sunday, Dec. 11 at 8 p.m., Jonathan Bennett (“Mean Girls,” “The Christmas House”) is a busy businessman named Sam who is laser-focused on work, until he gets tapped to babysit his niece and nephew while their parents are away. Sam’s not the best at uncle-duty and isn’t thrilled to meet Jason (George Krissa,) a family friend who seems to have the surrogate uncle job down pat. Each thaw to one another as the days go by in this LGBTQ love story.

“Must Love Christmas,” CBS, Sunday, Dec. 11 at 9 p.m., “The Equalizer” star, Liza Lapira, plays a popular romance novelist that specializes in Christmas-set love stories who finds herself stranded in a small, picturesque town... and in a love triangle.

“A Christmas to Treasure,” Lifetime, Friday, Dec. 16 at 8 p.m., Real-life married couple Kyle Massey and Taylor Frey star as estranged best friends who reunite for a holiday treasure hunt in their hometown — and the two begin to see each other as more-than-friends.

HEARTWARMING FOR THE HOLIDAYS

“The 24th Annual A Home for the Holidays at the Grove,” CBS, Paramount+, Friday, Dec. 23 at 8 p.m., This yearly special mixes musical performances with docu-style stories about adoption and foster care, as more than 400,000 children in the U.S. dream of finding a forever home and family. Gloria Estefan hosts and Andy Grammer, Little Big Town, David Foster and Katharine McPhee, and Mickey Guyton will perform.

FAMILY FARE

“Snow Day,” Nickelodeon/Paramount+, Friday, Dec. 16 at 7 p.m., is a musical remake of the 2000 comedy film featuring Chris Elliott, Jean Smart and Chevy Chase about hijinks that occur when a record level of snow falls in Upstate New York.

“ 5 More Sleeps ’Til Christmas,” NBC, Friday, Dec. 23 at 8:30 p.m., This half-hour animated special is inspired by Jimmy Fallon’s bestselling book of the same name and also narrated by “The Tonight Show” host. It’s about a boy whose specific plans leading up to Christmas get interrupted by surprise guests, helping him to embrace the true meaning of the holiday.

HOLIDAY EATING

“ The Great American Baking Show Celebrity Holiday,” The Roku Channel, Dec. 2., Ellie Kemper and Zach Cherry host a holiday baking competition with celebrities including Oscar-winner Nat Faxon, “Saturday Night Live” cast member Chloe Fineman and former NFL player Marshawn Lynch compete in bake-offs before famous baker judges, Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith.

“ Mary Berry’s Ultimate Christmas, ” PBS, Dec. 19 at 9 p.m., Beloved British home cook Dame Mary Berry takes viewers inside her approach to hosting a holiday feast attended by special guests.
https://apnews.com/article/holiday-t...2b156e575f7eac





‘Charlie Brown Christmas’ Tunes Still a Holiday Tradition after 57 Years
David Bauder

The Mendelson family would love to find the envelope where their father, Lee, scribbled some lyrics to jazz musician Vince Guaraldi’s composition “Christmas Time is Here” for an animated TV special featuring the “Peanuts” gang in 1965.

The producer always said it had taken less than half an hour to write, and he likely tossed the scrap of paper away. He was in a rush. Everything was rushed. No one even knew, once the special aired, whether it would ever be seen again.

Instead, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” became an indelible holiday tradition and so, too, has Guaraldi’s music — perhaps even more so.

“Christmas just doesn’t feel like Christmas without hearing that album in the background,” said Derrick Bang, author of the biography “Vince Guaraldi at the Piano.”

The special itself was a bit of an oddity: a cartoon story of the meaning of Christmas soundtracked by a sophisticated, mostly instrumental jazz trio of piano, bass and drum.

Yet it worked. Guaraldi’s cascading piano evokes both motion and lightly falling snow on “Skating.” The driving melody of “Linus and Lucy” is the eternal backdrop to a swinging party. “O Tannenbaum” shifts from the traditional carol to a bass-driven groove. A children’s choir adds charm to “Christmas Time is Here.”

The soundtrack has sold more than five million copies. Its nostalgia-fueled popularity has only grown, getting a crucial boost in 1998, when Starbucks began selling it in stores, and fed steadily by new products.

The latest, a box set of outtakes released this year, came when Jason Mendelson, one of the late producer’s four children, discovered tapes of Guaraldi’s recording sessions in a Los Angeles warehouse while looking for something else.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” has aired every year since 1965, although that tradition is about to change.

The special’s run on broadcast television ends this year. Apple TV+ bought the rights, and will stream it exclusively starting next year. While a recognition of television’s new direction, will that reduce the chances of new generations of children happening upon the story and music?

“I just remember, back in the days of three channels and scheduled programming, that was one of those things we were excited about because we knew it was coming on and we were familiar with it,” said Harry Connick Jr., who covered “Christmas Time is Here” for his own holiday disc just out.

“It was actually an amazing opportunity for music like that to be heard by a lot of people,” added Connick, a jazz devotee even as a youngster. “It was not necessarily the kind of music that would be played on regular radio.”

That’s even less likely now, as jazz recedes into the history books or the background of dinner parties, said Nathaniel Sloan, musicologist at the University of Southern California and co-host of the “Switched on Pop” podcast.

During the 1960s, jazz was closer to the mainstream and more likely to be played alongside pop music, he said.

The music Guaraldi created for the soundtrack is ambiguous and more complex than most holiday music, Sloan said. Tied to warm feelings for illustrator Charles M. Schulz’s classic comic page characters, time has made it traditional holiday music.

The list of people who have recorded “Christmas Time is Here” is long and varied. They include John Legend, Alicia Keys, Gloria Estefan, Mariah Carey, Mel Tormé, Dave Brubeck, Sarah McLachlan, Stone Temple Pilots, Chicago, and Toni Braxton.

Similarly, the unexpected places where the melody to “Linus and Lucy” have appeared testifies to how ingrained it is in American life. Michelle Obama played it on the piano when returning to her childhood home in the “Becoming” documentary. Foo Fighters included it in a rocking “Saturday Night Live” holiday medley. Prince banged it out during his last concert.

It all started in the San Francisco area, home base for Guaraldi, as it was for Mendelson and Schulz. Mendelson’s popular documentary on Willie Mays — Schulz’s favorite baseball player — convinced the reclusive cartoonist to participate in a “day in the life” film about his work. One of Mendelson’s favorite songs was Guaraldi’s breezy hit, “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” so the jazzman was recruited for a soundtrack.

In the days before cable and streaming, Mendelson couldn’t sell the documentary, so it went unseen.

After the popularity of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in 1964, a sponsor asked Mendelson if he’d considered making a “Peanuts” Christmas special. He lied that he had. Schulz agreed to outline a story, and Guaraldi came aboard, too, recycling “Linus and Lucy” from the documentary.

Animation is time-consuming, so the team had a tight deadline to make it onto television. It was Mendelson who decided that “Christmas Time is Here” was missing something without lyrics. He asked several songwriters to take on the task, but the deadline was too daunting.

So Mendelson sat in his office and did it himself: “Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer…”

“I’ve always loved the music and the melody, but I really didn’t understand how beautiful the lyrics were until I recorded it,” said Norah Jones, who included her take on the song on a disc released last year.

“The version with the children singing is so special,” she told The Associated Press. “There’s something very unique and heartwarming about children singing.”

The St. Paul’s Church Choir from San Rafael, California, was hired to sing “Christmas Time is Here” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” Producers infuriated the choir director by choosing a slightly out-of-tune version of the carol; they thought it captured an innocence they were seeking, said Bang, who wrote liner notes for the box set.

Some at CBS were nervous before the special aired. Executives wondered if viewers would accept their favorite comic strip characters come to “life” with voices and movement. Schulz’s insistence that the show quote from the Bible gave it a religious focus that television entertainment typically steered clear of.

But it was a hit, winning Peabody and Emmy awards, and never went away.

Guaraldi never had the chance to see his music age into standards. He died of a heart attack in 1976, only 47 years old.

“He’s the best-known jazz musician whose name you don’t know, because the music from the Christmas special has become so ubiquitous,” Bang said.

Lee Mendelson died at 86 in 2019 — on Christmas Day. Jason is reluctant to say how much money his father earned from his few minutes of writing the “Christmas Time is Here” lyrics. Here’s one hint: The song makes enough money, every year, to pay for all of the extended family’s holiday shopping.

And he never tires of hearing Guaraldi’s music, frequently attending concerts where the holiday songs are recreated live.

“I’ve never seen a bad one,” he said.
https://wreg.com/news/nation-and-wor...fter-57-years/





New Winamp Update Adds Features, Fixes, and (sigh) Support for “Music NFTs”

"Please do not post any rants about NFTs in this thread."
Andrew Cunningham

If you'd asked me in January to make some predictions about what 2022 would bring, I don't think "multiple significant updates to the Winamp player" would have been on the list. But the release candidate for version 5.9.1 of the software builds on the groundwork laid by August's 5.9 update to fix some bugs and add new features to the reanimated music player. Most of these are straightforward updates or improvements to existing features, but because it's 2022, one of the only new features is support for music NFTs.

My rudimentary understanding (gleaned mostly from sites like NFT Now that are focused almost exclusively on the purported benefits rather than the downsides) is that music NFTs operate like NFT images, except that the NFT provides a link to a digital music file instead of a link to a JPG. The benefits, according to advocates, are that artists can earn more money by creating scarcity (releasing unique or limited-run tracks, for example) and by getting a cut of secondhand sales of the NFT that happen between fans.

But being an updated version of a Windows 98-era music player, the support for NFT music in Winamp is a bit roundabout. People with NFT music libraries will need to export them from whatever platform they use and then import them into Winamp as an .m3u playlist. Winamp provided a video of this process, which we've included below.

"Winamp’s latest version lets music fans link their Metamask wallet via Brave, Chrome, or Firefox to Winamp. It then connects their favorite music NFTs to their tried-and-true player," the company said in a press release provided to Ars. "Winamp supports audio and video files distributed under both the ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards, and is launching this new feature for Ethereum and Polygon/Matic protocols."

This roundabout process is a place where Winamp's current ambitions (creator platform, NFT marketplace) collide with its actual shipping product (a music player whose cultural relevance peaked during the George W. Bush administration). To directly display websites needed to download these NFT playlists, according to the release notes, would require an updated rendering engine for Winamp's in-app browser, which is currently based on Internet Explorer 10.

There's still plenty here for legacy Winamp fans to like, and it's nice to see that all the modernization work done in the 5.9 update is paying off in the form of faster updates. Among many other fixes, the new release includes a "memory footprint reduction," a bandwidth increase for streamed music, an update to OpenSSL 3.0.5, and a few other updates for the underlying codecs and other software that Winamp uses to do its thing. As for the NFT support, Winamp developer Eddy Richman (who goes by the handle "DJ Egg" on the Winamp forums) wrote that people who don't want it can remove it, either during the install process or after Winamp is installed.

Perhaps anticipating that Winamp's remaining hardcore fans would not have a lot of fondness for NFTs, Richman also attempted to keep comments in the Winamp 5.9.1 release notes thread on-topic.

"Please do not post any rants about NFTs in this thread," he wrote.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022...or-music-nfts/

















Until next week,

- js.



















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