Slashdot Mirror

Everybody who didn't pay for a Microsoft email account had the entire contents of their mailbox at risk for the past 6 months...

"...the issue is much worse than previously reported, with the hackers able to access email content from a large number of Outlook, MSN, and Hotmail email accounts, according to a source who witnessed the attack in action and described it before Microsoft’s statement, as well as screenshots provided to Motherboard. Microsoft confirmed to Motherboard that hackers gained access to the content of some customers’ emails."

https://motherboard.vice.com/e...

Hmm...
Leaked files show what a Cellebrite phone extraction report looks like
US law enforcement alone have spent millions on the phone-cracking technology.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/israeli-firm-cellebrite-grab-phone-data-seconds/

US State Police Have Spent Millions on Israeli Phone Cracking Tech
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/aekqkj/us-state-police-have-spent-millions-on-israeli-phone-cracking-tech-cellebrite

Both of these articles written in Dec of 2016. The first article shows exactly what data (everything) Cellebrite can extract from devices.

I have to say that this finding has made the whole system more secure. This is difficult to say for closed source systems.

Well, not according to a related article.

(...)
Although Swiss Post claims the system has undergone three audits by auditing giant KPMG— among them an audit of the end-to-end encryption—it has never made the auditing reports public or indicated if anything significant got changed as a result of the audits.

“Even if you sat down and read every line and determined everything was good, the code still wouldn’t pass the bar for being good code,” (...)

(...) As part of the test, the Swiss Post is making the source code for the software available to participants. But the code wasn’t supposed to be open to just anyone to examine.

Instead, to obtain access to it, participants have to agree to terms that were published with the announcement of the bug bounty program.

“[Y]ou need to agree to these strange rules they have. So in the concept of free and open source code, it’s not really accessible,” said Hernani Marques, board member and spokesperson of the Chaos Computer Club of Switzerland. “I think they don’t get the concept of free and open code.”(...)

Whew, that's a load off my mind

Seriously, can we just end the endless war already. We don't need to always be at war with Eurasia. Stop voting for war hawks already.

Get used to it.

No. I refuse. I will fight back against that cultural momentum of corporations redefining what "ownership" and "sell/purchase" actually mean. I prefer products that are open and free. I try to self-host where possible. I void warranties. (And that bullshit sticker isn't legally binding anyway). I repair. I avoid products I can't repair. I don't own a 1984 wall-screen just so I can scream "play music". (Those things might be a useful product once they no longer need an internet connection. But until then, fuck no). And no I'm not going to rent a modem from the ISP, are you nuts? I advocate for the right to repair. I lament to others about the walled garden. I've annoyed all my family with the analogy of selling a suitcase with a brick in locked compartment. (and yeah I should stop that). I've written my rep and gotten a bullshit form letter back. I donate to the EFF.

Just stop buying this crap.

Now... I still buy a lot of this crap. I gave into Steam a while ago and yes, it absolutely infuriates me when I can't play a game because I'm offline. So now I veer towards GOG when I can. There's a sliding scale of how much a company respects the customers, and each string attached moves it over. Any competitor that can do the same thing, but also give me more respect gets my business.

"Blacks commit vastly disproportionate amount of crimes, especially violent ones"

All things male are considered bad. [The blatant sexism is everywhere. Making anything and everything a gendered issue (and therefore, a problem with men, of course). - Women of this generation make at least 8% more than similarly qualified males. [Looks like I remembered that 8% number from that Time Magazine article I linked]

White men systemically discriminated against in all spheres of life - from family court - to hiring [They literally had to end blind recruiting because, once the bias against men was removed, MORE men than before were found to be qualified. These talking head idiots didn't even realize that today's system already discriminates in womens' favor. Of course, the solution was to halt the study, lest we have a solid foundation to prove discrimination. But, I think this is VERY good early proof of systemic discrimination in hiring, at least in Australia.] - to welfare (men are not eligible in any way unless disabled or "disabled") [I was somewhat wrong here. If you look under "The Three-Month Time Limit", it appears that women without children cannot get SNAP long-term either. So, I had one, very minor point, which I don't have good evidence from a mainstream source for.]

Looks like it's you who got fucked. Moron.

Basically, Frontier is letting their copper rot on the ground, but still charging everyone full freight.

But some people can:

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/201...

https://www.vice.com/en_au/art...

On July 12, police in California arrested a college student accused of being part of a group of criminals who hacked dozens of cellphone numbers to steal more than $5 million in cryptocurrency. Joel Ortiz, a 20-year-old from Boston, allegedly hacked around 40 victims with the help of still unnamed accomplices, according to court documents obtained by Motherboard.

https://motherboard.vice.com/e...

Which sounds a bit more likely but still seems to be missing quite a bit.

but he was too busy competing in this one
https://www.vice.com/en_us/art...

Think of the intent this way...

You think of the intent that way, but as far as I can tell it's a story you've spun out of thin air. Where's your evidence for any of this?

Here's the letter from the board that initially accused him of violating the law. It clearly states the issue was that he kept using the title in communication with that same board, so clearly the people he contacted already knew he wasn't a PE.

https://www.scribd.com/documen...

You can find links to the rest here. It includes a letter of him writing that he is an "electronics engineer" from Sweden and states why his experience is relevant, but at no point states he's licensed. Show me in these documents where they confuse him for a PE at any point in the conversation.

https://motherboard.vice.com/e...

Samsung would have to prove themselves after their past track record.

"It may be the worst code I’ve ever seen. Everything you can do wrong there, they do it. You can see that nobody with any understanding of security looked at this code or wrote it."

Atrazine, not estrogen. Get it right.

(and for real, no it isn't)

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/vbgvw4/a-quick-refresher-the-truth-about-water-making-you-gay

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Sent His Beard Hair to a Rapper Who Does Witchcraft to Protect Him From ISIS

(reposted with links; really, Slashdot, no autolinking?)

Bill Wilson’s Experience with LSD

Bill W. (search for "LSD")

People with Addiction Are Tripping on Shrooms to Find God and Get Sober (search for "Wilson")

Because the SENIOR EDITOR apparently can't be bothered to do his fucking job;

https://motherboard.vice.com/e...

To whom it may concern; Whatever that idiot is getting paid, I'll do it for 10% less.

15 Comments and still no one bothered to provide the correct link... sigh. Must be this one I assume:

The Decline of American Peyote

You mean like you drill for oil in the Gulf, or how they still do mine for coal in Kentucky and West Virginia, as recklessly as is economically feasible?
   

Once in a while now you see stories about youngsters choosing trade schools over traditional colleges. That is classic market action. Demand and indirect subsidies drive up the price of something to the point where it is no longer a perceived value, and consumers seek alternatives. I work in IT but my degrees are in unrelated fields, if I was looking at high university debt in today's market I would definitely be looking at alternatives.

Not dealing in (whether commercially or gratis) proprietary software is always wise. $7,300,000/800,000 people is almost $9.13/person. Nobody who can afford a modern Lenovo computer will find $9.13 very rewarding and Lenovo won't find $7.3M a challenge to pay.

But the structure of proprietary software (being hidden from the user who is legally prohibited from inspecting or editing the software and often prohibited from sharing the software as well) keeps users ignorant of the software they run. Since there's a lot of proprietary malware out there and we can't tell which proprietary software is malware, we are wise to avoid it all. Ethically, all proprietary software operates not in the user's interests. Users aren't well served by software running on their computers which don't respect their software freedom. This is increasingly becoming a health/life or death concern (see a recent story about a CPAP machine hacker, for instance) and have always been an a concern for those motivated by how we ought to treat other people (perhaps the most important consideration we can make in life).

The actual link to the motherboard story is this one:

https://motherboard.vice.com/e...

This post links to a totally different article.

You flat earthers are so ignorant! We all know it is shaped like a donut.

Tim Cooke is one to talk. Following his "curation" of free speech..

https://news.vice.com/en_us/ar...

Tim thinks it's better for people to not be able to keep an eye on what Jones is saying than to do so. Seems foolish to me.

I am shocked - SHOCKED - that you, or anybody, would have the stones to say these hard-hitting journalists have anything less than a sterling reputation.

For example, have you ever seen the Motherboard for the MacBook Air? Without oodles and gobs of custom silicon, that product would NEVER have existed!

Yea, you'd have ended up with something slightly bigger and heavier. Of course, once built there's no reason to shred everything unless you're taking the Swinger model. Yea, sewing machine makers. The best way to limit the extant supply of rival quality goods is to destroy as many old models in part exchange as you can.

My GrandFather used to tell me about reading these when he was in the service. It helped him get through the hard times.

Good thing someone wasn't spoiling the endings for him.

https://motherboard.vice.com/e... they were on the right track now they are derailing the train again

This has been talked about several times, for example, "Why We Should Build Cloud Cities on Venus," here: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/539jj5/why-we-should-build-cloud-cities-on-venus
based on this 2003 paper: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030022668.pdf

These actions about GTA V mods are about mods that affect progression in online mode, as a Motherboard article linked from BBC's article clarifies, not so much about mods that affect only the offline experience.

Now to extend your analogy: Like other tabletop games, physical copies of the Monopoly property trading game support offline multiplayer. If Hasbro and EA were still offering an online version of Monopoly, and someone were cheating in that game, Hasbro and EA might be justified in seeking a civil search warrant.

Um, hard to know where to start, basically your entire post is disconnected from actual facts. The UN report was dire, but didn't include the effects of methane locked in permafrost.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/art...

Let's assume this is true, that if we don't reduce CO2 output to 50% of current levels by 2050 then we face severe and detrimental environmental effects from global warming. We know of four "zero carbon" energy sources today, wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear. Maybe people will toss in few more like geothermal and bio-fuels but I don't hear too much about those, likely because they come with other environmental impacts that we'd like to avoid. If the effects of CO2 are so dire then maybe we should be building more nuclear power plants to replace coal? If we cannot have nuclear power to stop this global threat to human survival then I have to wonder just how real of a threat this is. Even after decades of subsidies for wind and solar they still have not matched the "zero carbon" output from nuclear power. Nuclear power did have a head start, I'll grant that much, but nuclear power also had a near stop in any new construction for 40 years.

We've been waiting for 40 years for wind and solar to save us, how much longer can we wait?

There will come a point in which we must choose, nuclear power or global warming, because it is going to become abundantly clear that wind and solar will not save us.

Nice external link.

https://motherboard.vice.com/e... ?utm_source=reddit.com

Ha ha ha. That's a new one for me.

That's the reason for the Fair Repair Act that explicitly prohibits software locks on repairs, something Apple is actively lobbying against.

it's not meant to prevent theft of new Apple products, it's meant to shut out 3rd party repair places

And in the case of John Deere, farmers are turning to technicians with cracked Ukrainian John Deere software that they bought off the black market

The Apple System Configuration Suite software is cloud authenticated:

The AST 2 System Configuration suite is a diagnostic software that Apple uses to ensure that the computer is functioning properly. It includes the Mac Resource Inspector, which does a “quick health check of hardware and software,” as well as tools that check the system’s memory, display, power adapters, cooling system, and other aspects of the computer. It functions only if connected to Apple’s Global Service Exchange (GSX), a Cloud-based server that Apple uses to handle repairs and service. It requires a login from Apple to access.

But if there's a thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking, I find it hard to believe that such a move on Apple's part won't spawn an equivalent surge in hacked Apple System Configuration Suites.

Chantix can be even worse. There have been actual homicides and suicides.

You are correct.... pseudoscience in this case is a pejorative --- they're calling it pseudo to try and make people think of it like Astrology or Tarot Reading pseudoscience, Not because it isn't science, not because it can't be tested --- not because those theorizing it don't intend for it to be tested, but simply because they're in the group of physicists who has some groupthink, satisfied in what their theories look like so far, and they think this relatively new theory must be wrong --- the physicists are proud of this thing they've contrived that would no longer be necessary.

The article says it all:

Against claims that he is theorizing about pseudoscience, McCulloch argues that it is the physicists invoking dark matter who “have been on the slide into pseudoscience for decades” and that “the only reason the dark matterist haven’t noticed is they are all happily going down together, so self-correction has become impossible.” He points to 17 papers in which he uses QI to make accurate predictions without the need for constant adjustment that are often found in theories of dark matter.

Just fucking read the AC posts in this very thread.

Multiple posts demeaning people for being white and male.

But hey, Google has answers too.
https://goodmenproject.com/fea...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us...

How about all of those authors fuck off with their racist bullshit.

I thought they had those content moderators mostly in Philippines.
source: Vice: The Companies Cleaning the Deepest, Darkest Parts of Social Media

"
If the ability to repair broken equipment on the spot is so important, then why are no ag equipment companies catering to that segment of the market? Ag equipment manufacturing is a competitive industry and just in the US there are at least a half dozen very recognizable brands (meaning that there are probably more than that because someone in the industry would be more knowledgeable about them). To say nothing of equipment from foreign manufacturers.
"

It would appear you are posting about things you have no clue about. Imagine that your car broke down, and every part in it was DRM locked and you needed to have someone come onsite to fix it. Now imagine you needed it to close a $10,000K deal tomrorow which was do-or-die.. this is the situation farmers are in.

Your car is fairly easy, worst case, tow it to town. Imagine instead of a broken car, it is a 14,650 pound combine. How much woudl it cost to have that lifted and driven hours and hours to town?

Take a read:

https://motherboard.vice.com/e...

"You void your warantee if you root/fix your phone/fail to say three 'Hail Apples' every night" is one of the most enduring myths I've seen. Apple cannot "void your warantee" for anything they want, believe it or not, we even have laws that prevent it right here in the Banana Republic States of America. Alright, they're hardly ever enforced, so you can be forgiven for not knowing that they exist, but for what it's worth, Apple is violating the law by doing this, and the FTC is at least starting to pretend like they are going to do something about it. https://www.theregister.co.uk/... https://motherboard.vice.com/e... https://www.cultofmac.com/5407... https://venturebeat.com/2018/0... "But. but, it's a free market! Apple should be able to stick a three-foot long kilbasa in your rectum as punishment for not bricking your phone within 3 days of their releasing an update! What, you think you're special? If you don't update, you might get infected, and then infect others, so it's your obligation to brick your phone like everyone else because a working phone can be compromised! You owe it to them! It's right there on page 27 of the fine print! You agreed to it so you have to do it! You agreed to it! You agreed to it of your own free will! In a free market no less! A free market!" The "free market" hasn't devlolved quite that much yet, but give it another couple of years and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

To use a car analogy, it is similar to why we have sedans, SUV / minivans, and trucks.

Back in the '90s, the proverbial "killer app" to get everyone to buy a personal computer was The Internet. You needed your email and web surfing and the only way to do that was with a personal computer--despite some attempts to make it otherwise.

Which was great for companies that made personal computers. Because while you had competition, "a rising tide lifts all boats." Whether I buy a Dell, HP, Asus, or Toshiba, I'm still essentially buying the same thing. One might be "better" than the other, but these companies compete against each other for essentially the same thing.

The problem is that the tide is starting to go out. People aren't buying as many traditional personal computers. Phones are now personal computers--while it can only do about 50% of what a personal computer can do, it can do 100% of what most people want to do with their personal computer. The economies of scale that made the generic personal computer so successful are now threatened--the personal computer my Mom bought to surf the web is a 3 year-old version of the top-of-the-line computer that I bought to develop software when it first came out. But this time she bought a tablet--something different. The company that made that high-end computer can't move their costs down after a year or two for a wider audience because that market is fragmented.

In some ways, that means higher prices up front for the latest and greatest because they'll have a harder time selling last year's model. My Mom is no longer subsidizing my cheap hardware by buying the three year-old model of what I bought.

Drugs in general, and opiods in particular, are not the problem. Drug abuse is a symptom of deeper issues like isolation, depression, and hopelessness. It's literally self-medicating. This is not an epidemic among healthy, well-adjusted adults with stable incomes and functional social support networks. There is some of that, to be sure, but not an epidemic. It's impoverished areas of the country among people who have given up and feel left behind that are hardest hit. And again, drug abuse is a symptom of that.

The overwhelming majority of people don't become addicted to their prescription painkillers. All available evidence supports this. Of course corporations are greedy, and they need regulation, but opiods are the best treatment currently available for pain management, and if you've ever needed them, you know they are the difference between agony and relief. Limiting their availability or doctors' ability and discretion in prescribing only harms people who genuinely need them. Addicts will find a way regardless. Should we have support systems in place for those who do? Absolutely. But demonizing the supply side misses the point entirely.

For some reason, most people understand that brewers and distillers -- despite their much heavier advertising and glamorizing of alcohol than, say, opioid manufacturers of fentanyl -- don't create alcoholics, and that prohibition just made the problem worse, but everyone wants to believe that it's completely different this time. Because opiods. Yes, it's a compelling and easy-to-believe story that "big pharma" is responsible, but it doesn't really make sense at the end of the day. If manufacturers and prescribers were responsible, we might expect to see people with the most access to healthcare and the most dollars to spend have the most problems as a percentage of the respective demographics, but the reverse is true.

Nobody wants to talk about the socioeconomic drivers of addiction, because it means a) admitting a problem with the social structure in our country, b) it's hard to generate the same emotion and outrage about underprivileged segments of society as a story about a big bad enemy does and c) it's a much more difficult problem to solve.

I came across this in looking for supporting data, and it seems to be a good description of the real problem: https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/a...

See also:
https://jamanetwork.com/journa...
https://www.drugabuse.gov/abou...

Why do you think that these cities (Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, etc) have what are widely regarded as shitty police forces?

Police officers are people, you know? If you were a young police cadet - setting aside the idealistic utopians who believe they're going to "make a difference" - and you graduated in say the top 50% of your class, you'd have a choice of many cities you could be a cop in.

This isn't The Wire. Would you want to go work in a city like Baltimore, St Louis, etc with 50+ murders per 100k? Where the police are demonized by various political administrations, underfunded, and vilified by the population and media?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Or would you go work in an exurb or some other city where you might actually get treated like a human, and not as some sort of closet racist nazi thug?

https://news.vice.com/en_us/ar...

So assuming all the good cops go elsewhere, shitty cities have to scrape the bottom of the barrel in hiring, and end up with a higher proportion of bad cops, thugs, ego-trip adrenaline addicts, and BAD COPS.

Which then reinforces the cycle.

Of course bad cops need to be punished, but until the people of Baltimore elect administrations that are not corrupt rent-seekers, someone with the cojones to make the hard, unpleasant, tough decisions that it will take to clean the cesspool up - it won't get better.

it's how the chinese government keeps tabs on its greatest threats..

No it isn't. I don't think India will let them do that though.

Insane government, out of control cost of living, street conditions that are driving conventions and tourists away https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.... https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/a...

Yeah, I think I'll look for someplace else with a pleasant climate and craft housing.

Celebrite and Greykey have one hell of a time with the new iOS, and if your passphrase is 15+ characters, you effectively deny them access (at least until the cold war reaches another phase).

See this article:

Stop Using 6-Digit iPhone Passcodes - Motherboard

I am not sure that is an accurate statement, most of the Republican areas are rural (by USA landmass) and served by DSL. Think farmers and small town American. States like North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, etc....

Trump tried to help rural Republicans with broadband, but only has so much power:
https://motherboard.vice.com/e...

Sterile and clean is frankly boring as well. There needs to be a happy medium.

How much pooping do you need to be happy?

This is the root of the 'problem' - local governments negotiate exclusive agreements for various physical plants; cable cos get pole space which they usually actually have to rent from some entity, be it the ILEC, power utility, or the government. Telcos (ILECs usually, though CLECs are not different in this) either owned the pole space and so have the physical plant via incumbency and so offer DSL, or rented from the 'owner' and have virtually perpetual agreements, given that POTS was once critical, and now telephone is just a must-carry issue...

If the local government won't permit competitive cable TV-style franchises, this will not change soon. Wireless solutions are inadequate, even 5G will not really work in urban areas, though 600MHz could revolutionize rural delivery. Ethernet/MPLS-type delivery would work, but pole rentals are the problem, and that is the equivalent of competitive Cable TV-style delivery, with the competitive issue still in play.

New York seems to actually intend to kick out Charter Spectrum, for failing to deliver. This is actually NY invalidating the TWC/Bright House mergers, essentially making Charter unwind these and go away. No good can come of this, but perhaps it goes to appeal, and then NY says the era of exclusive agreements is over, and competitors come in to fight for share.

I truly doubt this is fixable in my lifetime. Geography and population cause problems in the US that just don't exist in Europe and Asia, where density solves the cost equation so much easily. Britain has a very different governmental structure, good and bad, and other nations for better or worse are just not the US. Several wireless technologies were promised, none delivered. But we hope and hope. And pay and pay.

https://news.vice.com/en_us/ar...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

One of those agencies (CIA) was recently caught red handed spying on the US Senate. The world is so fucked up it barely made the news.

https://news.vice.com/article/...

The reason that didn't make the news was because it wasn't true. It only made the brainwashing websites.