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• France rules Google Analytics non-compliant with GDPR

  11 février 2022, par Erin — Privacy

  Breaking news : The French Data Protection Agency, CNIL (Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés), has concluded that the use of Google Analytics is illegal under GDPR. The CNIL has begun issuing formal notices to website managers using Google Analytics.

  This follows the January 2022 Austrian Data Protection Authority’s decision to declare Google Analytics illegal to use under GDPR.

  Google Analytics GDPR breaches continue to spread through the EU

  Since the invalidation of the Privacy Shield framework, an agreement between the EU and US that allowed the transfer of data to certified US companies, the CNIL and other EU data protection authorities have received numerous complaints regarding data transfers collected during visits to websites using Google Analytics.

  "It’s interesting to see that the different European Data Protection Authorities all come to the same conclusion : the use of Google Analytics is illegal. There is a European task force and we assume that this action is coordinated and other authorities will decide similarly."

  About the CNIL’s decision

  In this model case, the CNIL has found that an unnamed website’s use of Google Analytics is non-compliant with GDPR because it had breached Article 44 which prohibits the transfer of personal data beyond the EU, unless the recipient country can prove adequate data protection. 

  Under the GDPR, personal data covers a range of identifiers including email address, race, gender, phone number to name a few, but the less obvious identifiers include IP addresses or cookie IDs, for instance. 

  The CNIL’s decision was based on the fact that the US does not meet GDPR sufficient levels of data protection as a result of US surveillance laws. Therefore, the unnamed website’s use of Google Analytics created risks for their website visitors when their personal data was exported to the US. 

  At the time of writing, it is unknown if the CNIL has issued a fine for the GDPR breach. However, the website manager of the unnamed website has been ordered by the CNIL to comply with the GDPR and, if necessary, stop using Google Analytics under the current conditions.

  "One thing we’re certain of is that these decisions will continue to roll out throughout the EU and potentially beyond.

  Other countries are imposing their own privacy regulations that closely mirror the GDPR like Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD), India’s Data Protection Bill, New Zealand’s Privacy Act and Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) to name a few.”

  The CNIL offers an evaluation programme to help website managers determine whether web analytics solutions are exempt from collecting data prior to users’ agreement to opt-in through consent screens. Matomo, for instance, is a leading Google Analytics alternative that has been recommended by CNIL and is exempt from tracking consent. 

  

  English translation : “This is why I anticipated this announcement, gradually moving the analytics of my sites to @matomo_org since several weeks !

  “The @CNIL believes that the use of @googleanalytics is a violation of #GDPR”

  Immediate action required for Google Analytics users

  The CNIL and other EU-based data protection authorities have made their stance on Google Analytics clear and inaction will likely result in fines, which under the GDPR, can be up to €20 million or 4% of the organisation’s global turnover – whichever is higher.

  Based on the CNIL’s formal notice to the model case’s website manager, Google Analytics users should take immediate action to remove any chances of personal data being transferred to the US or find a Google Analytics alternative that is GDPR compliant. 

  

  English translation : “The CNIL considers that the use of Google Analytics is a violation of the GDPR. I use @matomo_org and I welcome it *winking face* It will squeal tires among growthackers who are slaughtering. Opportunity to look at alternative tools”

  Ready to begin your journey to GDPR compliance with Matomo ? Start your 21-day free trial now (no credit card required) and take advantage of our Google Analytics importer so you don’t lose any of your historical data. 

  Try 21-day free Cloud trial

  What does this mean for Matomo users ?

  As the GDPR continues to evolve, our users can rest assured that Matomo will be at the forefront of these changes. With Matomo Cloud, all data is stored in the EU or in your country of choice when you self-host on your own servers with Matomo On-Premise.

  Conclusion

  Google is in the EU’s crosshairs and organisations that continue to use their tools will be the one’s left to clean up the mess – not Google. Now is the time to act. Search for a Google Analytics alternative and close your compliance gaps today. 

  Join over 1 million other websites using Matomo now. Give Matomo a try with a 21-day free trial – no credit card required. 

  Try 21-day free Cloud trial

  We’d like to also bring attention to the privacy-fighting efforts from noyb and Max Schrems, as this should not go unnoticed. noyb is an independent, non-profit organisation that relies on the support of individuals. Support privacy by supporting noyb – donate or become a member now. 

  Contact details for media :

  For quotes or interviews, please email marketing@matomo.org

• Dreamcast Finds

  15 avril 2022, par Multimedia Mike — Sega Dreamcast

  Pursuant to my recent post about finally understanding how Sega Dreamcast GD-ROM rips are structured, I was able to prepare the contents of various demo discs in a manner that makes exploration easy via the Internet Archive. This is due to the way that IA makes it easy to browse archives such as ZIP or ISO files (anything that 7zip knows how to unpack), and also presents the audio tracks for native playback directly through the web browser.

  These are some of the interesting things I have found while perusing the various Dreamcast sampler discs.

  Multimedia Formats
  First and foremost : Multimedia-wise, SFD and ADX files abound on all the discs. SFD files are Sofdec, a middleware format used for a lot of FMV on Dreamcast games. These were little more than MPEG video files with a non-MPEG (ADPCM instead) audio codec. VLC will usually play the video portions of these files but has trouble detecting the audio. It’s not for lack of audio codec support because it can play the ADX files just fine.
  

  It should be noted that Dreamcast Magazine Disc 11 has an actual .mpg file (as opposed to a .sfd file) that has proper MPEG audio instead instead of ADX ADPCM.

  The only other multimedia format I know of that was used in any Dreamcast games was 4XM, used on Alone In The Dark : The New Nightmare. I wrote a simple C tool a long time to recover these files from a disc image I extracted myself. Rather than interpreting the ISO-9660 filesystem, the tool just crawled through the binary blob searching for ‘4XMV’ file signatures and using length data within the files for extraction.

  Also, there are plentiful PVR files (in reference to the PowerVR2 GPU hardware that the DC uses) which ‘file’ dutifully identifies as “Sega PVR image”. There are probably tools to view them. It doesn’t appear to be a complicated format.

  Scripting
  I was fascinated to see Lua files on at least one of the discs. It turns out that MDK 2 leverages the language, as several other games do. But it was still interesting to see the .lua files show up in the Dreamcast version as well.

  That Windows CE Logo
  Every Sega Dreamcast is famously emblazoned with a logo mentioning Microsoft Windows CE :

  
  
  

  It has confused many folks. It also confused me until this exploratory exercise. Many would wonder if the Dreamcast booted up into some Windows CE OS environment that then ran the game, but that certainly wasn’t it. Indeed, Dreamcast was one of the last consoles that really didn’t have any kind of hypervisor operating system managing everything.

  I found a file called rt2dc.exe on one sampler disc. At first, I suspected that this was a development utility for Windows to convert some “RT” graphical format into a format more suitable for the Dreamcast. Then, ‘file’ told me that it was actually a Windows EXE but compiled for the Hitachi SH-4 CPU (the brain inside the DC). Does the conversion utility run on the Dreamcast itself ? Then I analyzed the strings inside the binary and saw references to train stations. That’s when it started to click for me that this was the binary executable for the demo version of Railroad Tycoon 2 : Gold Edition, hence “rt2dc.exe”. Still, this provides some insight about whether Dreamcast “runs” Windows. This binary was built against a series of Windows CE libraries. The symbols also imply DirectX compatibility.

  Here is a page with more info about the WinCE/DirectX variant for the Sega Dreamcast. It seems that this was useful for closing the gap between PC and DC ports of games (i.e., being able to re-use more code between the 2 platforms). I guess this was part of what made Dreamcast a dry run for the DirectXbox (later Xbox).

  Here is a list of all the Dreamcast games that are known to use Windows CE.

  Suddenly, I am curious if tools such as IDA Pro or Ghidra can possibly open up Windows CE binaries that contain SH-4 code. Not that I’m particularly interested in reverse engineering any algorithms locked up in Dreamcast land.

  Tomb Raider Easter Egg
  The volume 6 sampler disc has a demo of Tomb Raider : The Last Revelation. While inspecting the strings, I found an Easter egg. I was far from the first person to discover it, though, as seen on this The Cutting Room Floor wiki page (look under “Developer Message”). It looks like I am the first person to notice it on the Dreamcast version. It shows up at offset 0xE3978 in the Dreamcast (demo version) binary, if anyone with permissions wants to update the page.

  Web Browser
  Then there’s the Web Browser for Sega Dreamcast. It seemed to be included on a lot of these sampler discs. But only mentioning the web browser undersells it– the thing also bundled an email client and an IRC client. It’s important to remember that the Dreamcast also had a keyboard peripheral.

  I need to check the timeline for when the web browser first became available vs. when the MIL-CD hack became known. My thinking is that there is no way that the web browser program didn’t have some security issues– buffer overflows and the like. It seems like this would have been a good method of breaking the security of the system.

  Ironically, I suddenly can think of a reason why one might want to use advanced reverse engineering tools on Dreamcast binaries, something I struggled with just a few paragraphs ago.

  Odds ‘n Ends
  It’s always fun to find plain text files among video game assets and speculating on the precise meaning… while also marveling how long people have been struggling to correctly spell “length”.

  Internationalization via plain text files.

  Another game (Slave Zero) saw fit to zip its assets. Maybe this was to save space in order to fit everything on the magazine sampler disc. Quizzically, this didn’t really save an appreciable amount of space.

  Finally, all the discs have an audio track 2 that advises that the disc must be played in a Dreamcast console. Not unusual. However, volume 4 also has a Japanese lady saying the same thing on track 4. This is odd because track 4 is one of the GD area audio tracks and is not accessible with normal CD hardware. Further, she identifies the disc as a “Windows CE disc”.

  The post Dreamcast Finds first appeared on Breaking Eggs And Making Omelettes.

• Video frames with timestamp or export frame name and timestamp to excel file

  20 avril 2022, par Melodic_Knee

  I need to break a video into frames (60fps) and frame name must be in the fashion of %d_hh-mm-ss.ms.png, Or, any solution that gives frame name, and the time in excel file will work

  


  Note : - time here must be the time at which the frame appeared in the video