UGN Security: Site News http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php UGN Security: Site News UGN Security Forums - UBB.threads(tm) Happy Holidays from Gizmo & Trey http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/56342/Happy_Holidays_from_Gizmo_amp_.html#Post56342 Posted by HighLander:
Happy Holidays Gizmo, long time, and Happy Holidays to the rest of the UGN staff]]> Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:47:12 GMT To move forward... http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/52638/To_move_forward.html#Post52638 Posted by Gizmo:
We removed public access to the old Archive system due to it having several vulnerabilities that we just didn't have the time to patch; I felt that if we had to go and patch something that I might as well just make something secure from the get go, and that's precisely what I did...

The downside however is that I had a lot of help from the old members inserting the old (ancient) data from the original design from BlackBeard into the old system; and I just haven't had the resources to add it all into the newest system.

I found out today that they finally patched (well, a 3rd party developer) most of the exploits for the old system... So, we're going to be re-activating the old archive and old kbase until all of its data can be added to the new systems.

It'll take some time for the areas to be re-crawled by search engines, but it'll have to do for the time being.]]> Mon, 10 Jan 2011 08:32:00 GMT Happy Holidays and a Merry Christmas! http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/52536/Happy_Holidays_and_a_Merry_Chr.html#Post52536 Posted by Gizmo:
We'd like to wish you all a safe and happy holiday season; Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!]]> Sun, 26 Dec 2010 04:09:19 GMT Forum Upgrade - 7.5.6 http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/51604/Forum_Upgrade_7_5_6.html#Post51604 Posted by Gizmo:
We'll likely be preforming the UBB.Threads upgrade (from v7.5.3 to 7.5.6) sometime this afternoon. There will be a small "hiccup" period as this upgrade is pushed out.

EDIT:
'eh decided that since I had already hacked the files this early that rolling out the update wasn't really too much of a hassle...

So, upgrade to what should be the last in the UBB.Threads 7 Series is now complete.]]> Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:44:30 BST Mailings - May 2010 http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/50971/Mailings_May_2010.html#Post50971 Posted by Gizmo:
We've just sent off a message to our mailing list regarding the new updates to the site. We'll also be sending this message off to users of the forum who've elected to allow us to contact them.

This mailing is as follows:
Quote:
If you haven't had the time to stop by and check out all of the updates I'd like to invite you to take a look at our 2010 Spring Update topic on our forums which can be found:
http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubb...0Changelog.html

A lot of things have been changed, updated, and added; the short list:
* Recommended Reading - New system in place, planned to hold book recommendations and short reviews.
* Links Maintenance - now has a backend for managing site links and link data.
* File Sharing - Reworked the system to make management easier.
* Caching - Speeding up the site has been a big thing to us, items are now cached for frontend viewing.
* RSS/Javascript - All new sections have Javascript and RSS syndication options available.
* Reports - Users can now report invalid information and outdated links.

There are many, many more items that have been added; stop by and take a look!


You can subscribe to our mailings on the main page. We rarely send anything out, and we never share our user database (as that'd be a pretty douchie thing to do).

Also, the mailing list has been down for a couple of months while we where doing system updates, the system is fully functional as of today (and hence today's mailing lol).]]> Thu, 20 May 2010 09:10:56 BST RSS and JavaScript Syndication http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/50940/RSS_and_JavaScript_Syndication.html#Post50940 Posted by Gizmo:
We now allow syndication of all new content (short of the forums) created on the site through both RSS and JavaScript feeds! See an example on the forums on the left side "Latest Reviews" island (which grabs the feed of the last 10 posted reviews).

This FAQ Entry will give you some information on our syndication options.]]> Sat, 15 May 2010 08:51:48 BST Torrent Listing - ISOHunt http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/50810/Torrent_Listing_ISOHunt.html#Post50810 Posted by Gizmo:
For those of you who haven't noticed yet, ISOHunt is no longer a valuable resource for US users; all US requests are being filtered to a "stripped" version which is little more useful than say "Google".

As of this, we will no longer be linking to them on the site. It kind of sucks since they're definitely one of my favorites, but as it's not useful to *everyone* (short of popping through non-US based proxies) it has no real reason to be linked to.

ISOHunt's site has this to say:
Quote:
US users, welcome to the lighter and lightning fast isoHunt! Although we bring this new search engine to you with a burden from the lawsuit brought by the MPAA, we hope you understand the reason why we are making this change. It is to address concerns Judge Wilson has over inducing copyright infringement in the US. Though inducement is never our intention and we have evidence to support it, with isoHunt Lite we want to affirm publicly that isoHunt's essential function is nothing more than a search engine and a public utility with all the net neutrality it affords and should be afforded.

Despite rumors that we are ordered to keyword filter for US, there's only a proposed order, no actual order. Freedom of speech, non-infringing use and technical implementability issues are still being debated in further court briefs. We have not done any keyword filtering and is fighting all we can not to, because we believe search terms are ambiguous by nature, and any requirement to keyword filter is a violation of freedom of speech and amounts to no less than censorship. There is much non-infringing uses of BitTorrent technology and we hope you will be able to continue to use isoHunt for these uses, free of constraints by large holes in the english dictionary because your search triggered a keyword in a title of one of the million movies that have been produced.

Why would you still use isoHunt you ask now that it's just like Google and Yahoo and you can search for torrents with those? While we won't dispute there's fundamental difference, on isoHunt Lite you get ranking by seeds/leechers and ratings besides search relevancy and age. A general search engine also do not group as one for identical torrents spread on multiple websites on the Web. Your continued use of isoHunt will also support our upcoming appeal against the MPAA, and we thank you in advance.

We protest the possibility we may be required by US law in upcoming injunction to keyword filter for US users as it is little different from censorship. The DMCA mandates with reason that copyright notice and takedown requested by copyright holders be done under penalty of perjury with accurate identifcation, with standard practice of URLs, not broad mucking with the dictionary. If you want to join us in protest, share this by tweet, facebook, etc. and write to Congress. Donation to organizations like the EFF will also help.


UPDATE: for users hating not able to sort, this is one you shouldn't care about. isoHunt Lite obviously has stripped a lot of features, sorting however uses the same "isoHunt Rank" method that's default on regular isoHunt, and is the best sorting method as it combines multiple factors, not just by seeds or leechers. Consider the better, default ranking a feature you don't get on other websites. Also note the Cached links at last lines of search results for a cached .torrent in case the original site is down or changed.
]]> Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:47:17 BST New Staffing Requests http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/50626/New_Staffing_Requests.html#Post50626 Posted by Gizmo:
It's no secret that we've been working long hours revamping the site, new sections and tons of new code all make for may new options.

While we wait to get the jobs system revamped, I'd like to take the time to let you know that we're going to do away with the "News Staff" job title and instead replace it with "Content Providers".

The "Content Provider" job will have plenty of options, either you'll monitor news posts on the forum (by our content aggregation bot) and prune duplicate items, or you'll post new content that you find on the web.

ANYONE can post new items, but "Content Providers" are those who will basically pledge a couple of hours of their time per week to add new content to the site; the site is after-all a marriage of everyone's time and effort, from users old and new.

To add new content you can find a "Submit" link on all of the main pages, or the "Submission" section on the navigation bar of the main site.

A couple of sections we'd like to focus on (for the time being) is Video Syndication (with videos from Google, Yahoo, YouTube, and MySpace) and Site Articles.

We're also going to be working on porting all of the content from the old archive to the new archive (and the new articles system) later on in the year (as there is a lot of content to be ported over).

It's my goal to dramatically increase our web presence by the end of the year; it was drastically reduced over the last year while we coded the new systems, but with the new systems we're feeding new data to Google as it's added to the site (via SiteMaps).

So if you've got some time to spare, we'd love the help! Just let me know if you're interested, and what type of items you'd like to help with. My EMail and Private Messages are always open to you.]]> Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:06:47 GMT Norton Safe Web Results http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/50465/Norton_Safe_Web_Results.html#Post50465 Posted by Gizmo:
Looks like our Norton Re-Evaluation has come through, and we've even gotten their certification for ecommerce for the store in there :P.]]> Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:17:16 GMT 2010 Spring Clean Changelog http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/50427/2010_Spring_Clean_Changelog.html#Post50427 Posted by Gizmo:
I'd just like to add to this changelog that we've added RSS and JavaScript syndication options which where posted about here.]]> Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:12:02 GMT Recommended Reading http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/50425/Recommended_Reading.html#Post50425 Posted by Gizmo:
Some time ago a project arose, it was Required Reading for Newbies; one of many projects that begun here at UGN Security over the years.

The goal of this project was to provide users with articles which would be beneficial to furthering their knowledge in many areas (computing, telecommunications, electronics, etc).

It's been some time since that project has existed, but we still respect all of the hard work of that project, and today we bring that one step further.

I'm happy to announce that the Recommended Reading section of the main page that was thrown into existence earlier in the year is getting some much needed love. I've been working hard and long to finish up the system and start populating new content to it.

At the time being you can just see a simple description and link to amazon; but in the future you'll be able to locate the book(s) on numerous online retailers via its ISBN tag.

We're also planning to have an image of the book(s) beside their listing as well as some other little additions (stay tuned for our Summer Code announcements coming in a few weeks).

For the time being, if you have a couple of books you'd like to recommend, just let us know! You can always Submit a Book (since the site is built around YOU, you can always help by submitting content!).]]> Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:49:52 GMT Cleanup http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/50406/Cleanup.html#Post50406 Posted by Gizmo:
I am in the process of doing some spring cleaning currently as some issues have arose...

On some pages when submitting an invalid captcha response you'll be presented with a blank page versus a proper error message; I'm not entirely sure what's causing said behavior, but I anticipate a fix shortly.

I'll be going through the error logs and checking various settings to see if there are any other cleanup tasks to be had.

I'm also planning to preform several service upgrades as well, but these shouldn't effect performance much (if at all).]]> Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:15:31 GMT IRC Server Relocation Plan http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/50211/IRC_Server_Relocation_Plan.html#Post50211 Posted by Gizmo:
Since our shell host has blocked our ability to login to the shells and snag a recent copy of the config's (which we did earlier in the month anyway) we've chosen to move forward on the relocation plan early; the change of servers occurred just moments ago so all irc traffic should start forwarding to FreeNode immediately.

Please note that your usernames are not pre-registered on FreeNode, so you'll need to register your names and ask me on the new server for channel access (autoops, superops, vops, etc).]]> Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:02:50 GMT Happy Holidays! http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/49757/Happy_Holidays.html#Post49757 Posted by Gizmo:
UGN Security would like to take the time to wish you all a Safe and Happy Holiday Season! (And Merry Christmas to you who think I'm saying "Happy Holidays" to not say Christmas).

Be safe, don't drink and drive, tell those you love that you love them...]]> Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:53:22 GMT A Setback... http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/49618/A_Setback.html#Post49618 Posted by Gizmo:
Hey guys, I had hoped to have more of the data population done on the new Archive and Knowledgebase systems but unfortunately some medical issues came up and I'm not really able to work on them for the time being.

On Friday October 23rd I went in for surgery on a tumerous growth and am unable to walk for several weeks; now normally I'd have the perfect opportunity to work on things under these conditions, however the pain medications make it difficult to format the data and troubleshoot any potential issues that can come out which would result in having to do some slight recoding.

So, for the time being, since I'm the only one working on the data population and coding, I'll need to place those projects on the back burner until I'm no longer on pain medication and the medical issues have lightened up.

I'm expecting this to only take a couple of weeks, so it shouldn't be too large of a dent in the grand scheme of things. I'll take the downtime to submit all sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools to ensure their cache of all data is up to date.]]> Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:04:47 GMT