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Putin's Soccer Ball for Trump Had Transmitter Chip, Logo Indicates (bloomberg.com)
Russian President Vladimir Putin's gift of a soccer ball to U.S. President Donald Trump last week set off a chorus of warnings -- some of them only half in jest -- that the World Cup souvenir could be bugged. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham even tweeted, "I'd check the soccer ball for listening devices and never allow it in the White House." It turns out they weren't entirely wrong. From a report: Markings on the ball indicate that it contained a chip with a tiny antenna that transmits to nearby phones. But rather than a spy device, the chip is an advertised feature of the Adidas AG ball. Photographs from the news conference in Helsinki, where Putin handed the ball to Trump, show it bore a logo for a near-field communication tag. During manufacturing, the NFC chip is placed inside the ball under that logo, which resembles the icon for a WiFi signal, according to the Adidas website. The chip allows fans to access player videos, competitions and other content by bringing their mobile devices close to the ball. The feature is included in the 2018 FIFA World Cup match ball that's sold on the Adidas website for $165 (reduced to $83 in the past week).
Trump kissed Putin's dick on international television then incompetently pretended he didn't. Mueller isn't fooled obviously. Get a rope.
The WH has edited the official transcript AND edited the official video. So it's no mistake - https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/25/politics/trump-putin-transcript/index.html
Slow news day, huh. Head flappers are going to flap their flappy little heads about something.
Left and Right, let's unite! Put aside our differences and work together for Make America Great Again. Let's do it! We can do it.
Ebony and Ivory living in harmony? Awesome thoughts! Peace out.
Putin could have given the Orange Dipshit a live camera with a big flashing "RECORDING" light on it, and the Orange Asshole would stick it in the Oval Office. There's no end to his stupidity (or fealty to Russia).
I don't respond to AC's.
TFS starts out as hinting that its going to be a "muh Russian hackers" anti-Trump story, but then morphs into an ad for an Adidas Soccer ball. Not that is going to stop the anti-Trump anon posts, though.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/25/politics/trump-putin-transcript/index.html - and then the coverup is evidence of cognizance of guilt, not to mention a crime to edit an official record for such purposes.
I for one welcome are new Russian advertising overlords.
You're absolutely right, there will be nothing greater for America than upholding our highest laws and hanging this treasonous sack of emoluments and bullshit lies. Don't forget his bitch beta traitor sons or feckless daughter either!
America will be fucking awesome again, once we get rid of these ridiculously retarded traitors and get back to draining the swamp - for real this time, Mueller style.
Sure, we all know that *BSD is a failure, but why? Why did *BSD die? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 20 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD effectively lost all of its market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personas?
The record is unambiguously clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
Fact: BSD is D E A D
Tons of consumer goods have RFIDs in them now and few people know. They are in shoes and belts and purses and higher end clothing items, and exist to track consumer patterns as they are scanned at various store entrances. This is not a conspiracy theory - it has been going on for a long time.
This product is actually better in that it fully discloses some kind of end-user use for this, and it's not only about secret analytics (although it's certainly also used for company analytics).
Now that we know Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton it goes without saying that she must be given the Democratic nomination again in 2020. All potential challengers need to step aside. If it weren't for the Russian meddling she would've clearly won so she has to run again.
Okay, fine, I'm down with that.
First, get Trump out of office, and his entire Administration, too, and yank out all his appointees. Then we can talk.
The summary says:
the chip is an advertised feature of the Adidas AG ball
Are we going to now say that Russia hacked Adidas, put a "spy! device on it (NFC of all things) for the sheer purpose of listening in on Trump?
The Trump Derangement Syndrome has reached new epic proportions.
Sounds like a great place to hide something in plain sight.
A soccer ball with a transmitter that isn't supposed to have one would stand out. However, a soccer ball that has a *different* transmitter than it came with would be much harder to identify.
Obviously that NFC chip will link Trump to the C&C server Putin has set up to give Trump orders as to what he should work on sabotaging next. Russian cyberoperatives have clearly demonstrated their proficiency in hacking into any system they want, so hacking into whatever media server that chip links to should be trivial for them. Orders and other relevant data embedded in media files (a common steganography technique) can then be easily retrieved and decoded by Trump and no one would be the wiser.
Haha, I'm just kidding.
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...or am I?
"The chip allows fans to access player videos, competitions and other content by bringing their mobile devices close to the ball."
Or you could just browse the web to get the same content? I suppose there is always the possibility for exclusive content locked behind some obscure URL that is unique to whatever is stored on the chip, but really? I find this stuff interesting from a technical perspective but cringe-worthy if actually marketed and desired.
why bother to bug the ball when he has the President himself in his pocket?
And their constant election meddling.
And replace them with your fucking traitors and asshats? Nope. We had eight years of nothing but amateur hour with Obama and we are not electing some dressed up socialist asshole. I would rather have Donald Dingdong than some left wing twerp. Yeah your side is just that bad.
Remember when the biggest foreign relations scandal involving a president was giving a bust of Churchill back to England?
Good times.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why, in the name of all that is or ever will be, would a gawds damned soccer ball need to be wireless enabled? Yes, I see the little sales blurb there trying to justify a $165 souvenir ball. Fine, whatever, dipshits gonna dipshit cause gadget overload is never enough, but why cooked this shit up? The internet of shit thing is really getting out of hand. It's seriously to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if our toilets get wireless enabled so they can report the content of our excrement directly to our doctors/insurance company so they can nail us on violations of whatever bullshit health code they've cooked up we're supposed to follow that day.
Anybody supporting that level of dumbfuckery (the ball, as I don't *THINK* the toilet exists . . . yet) needs a good swift kick in the jigglers.
On top of that, since that's the actual configuration of the ball, they could have hidden some real spying devices within it and disguised them as the official version's antenna. This whole thing has me wantin' to smack my head into the wall repeatedly until I lose consciousness and just hope I don't wake up. Too much stupid in the world to take.
so you believe them when they tell you what is in there
did you miss the "trojan horse" story in school or are you really that stupid?
The transmitter clues on the outside are just a distraction from the interior, where the Keeper lived. You just wait, Trump is suddenly going to start making sense and speaking rationally. Only when he drinks (which he's not yet known for doing) will he be able to honestly speak his mind. (Keepers can't handle booze.)
That's probably all it does. An access token at best, yes, and even that is doubtful since it's meant to send your phone to promotional material. Which, judging how see socnet users froth over cinema adverts (aka trailers), is a smart move for Adidas.
And many years ago, he did :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
In Soviet Russia ball kicks you.
Tried to find the like button for this reply.
Let's pretend that one exists
[X] Like Post
There, maga
I think you aren't giving Pence a fair chance. He's a disgusting person, but I fucking swear, he's not a spoiled child like Trump. He'll merely push for evil things, not insane evil things. He's relatively oldschool. And he can be replaced with the 2020 election, unless Republicans really just can't do better. Or he can be replaced earlier, if he is just another criminal too. But there are actually good reasons to believe Pence is not a criminal the way Trump is. Pence is merely an anti-American asshole. Maybe you don't want an anti-American asshole as president, but as you've seen, we can do a lot worse.
is can they embed some sort of position-tracking chip in the ball so when players kick it high the video stream is augmented to show the vertical projection of the ball on the grass in real time? Not knowing in which direction the ball is going always bothered me when watching the game on the 2D screen.
Keep stupid clickbait headlines off Slashdot, will ya?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
How does the NFC thing work? Seems like marketing hype (well, duh):
During manufacturing, the NFC chip is placed inside the ball under that logo, which resembles the icon for a WiFi signal, according to the Adidas website. The chip allows fans to access player videos, competitions and other content by bringing their mobile devices close to the ball.
Let's say I'm watching the France/Croatia game at the World Cup and I want to see one of those player videos of Kylian Mbappe. All I have to do is run onto the field, grab the ball and hold my phone near it? Sounds like a lot of work. Well, compared to drinking too much beer and starting a fight with the other team's fans.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
trump got cucked by putin hahahhaa
Well, his idol definitely got the upper hand. It's going to take a bit for trump to clean that cream off his chin; but we know he'll be back for more.
Traitors and asshats
Yeah, sure, 'traitors and asshats' that will actually protect the environment (you know, the air you breathe, the water you drink, and so on), not allow the destruction of animal species for no damned good reason, that won't destroy public education in favor of 'vouchers' that only benefit The Rich and leave The Poor and middle-class with shit schools and shit teachers, not sabotage the national economy with 'tax cuts' that only benefit The Rich and fuck over everyone else, not have a neo-nazi heading up the DoJ, not shit on the long-time allies of the U.S., not piss off the entire world with heavy-handed 'trade tariffs' instead of taking a more thoughtful and measured approach, not tearing apart families for having the almighty GALL to want to get their children away from violent regimes and violent drug cartels, not hand the Internet to greedy ISPs on a silver platter, fucking over the American consumer in the process, not appoint neo-nazis to the Supreme Court, helping drag us back socio-politically to the 1940's, and so on, and so on, and so on. Get your heads out of your asses and stop helping fuck over the country you live in, you mongoloids.
She won't win (she's got the charisma of a dead trout and she's pretty much persona non grata in the party after losing to his orangeness) but she'd draw so much fire it'd be smooth sailing for the Dems.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
NFC is effectively RFID, which has been used to track razor blades at walmart for over a decade. It can contain data like a QRcode does if there are enough bits.
NFC on smarted devices allows dynamic RFID stuff - like payment systems.
Had a Nexus4 which claimed to have NFC support. It worked, sometimes, but it wasn't consistent enough for me to trust it. I have a Yubikey with NFC support for 2-factor auth. It worked with the N4 about 1:20 attempts under very controlled use.
NFC seems to be 5cm or less, but there have been proven cases of 5m and more. I'd feel better using a QRcode.
If I remember correctly, Goal Line Technology relies on a couple of RFID chips being placed on the ball. Then they communicate with sensors placed on the goal posts and crossbar.
However, I'm sure the sensors are used to spy on the goalkeepers.
> And we taxpayers have spent more money flying Trumpoid down to Mar-a-Lago and providing SS protection there, just so he can GOLF than the Mueller investigation has cost so far.
I'm curious what point you were trying to make via this? That we have to spend a lot because unhinged leftists want to kill him?
That settles it! Adidas is in cohorts with the KGB....
US did bug Merkel.
Agreed.
Let's follow the left into it's socialist utopia of safe spaces, support for mass illegal immigration, 8 billion pronouns, "diversity", thought police, protests for everything, high taxes, affirmative action, micro-aggressions, identity politics, anti-white/asian/male rhetoric, bending over to foreign gov'ts, shitty school lunches, tearing down historical statues, warnings/labels/regulations for everything, etc (sorry, I got bored writing this list).
Anyway, the left is so lame it hurts.
PS Yo where's PopeRatzo? These threads always bring you two out.
When you dig deeper in the articles, and read the speeches and comments, they really do sound apologetic. However, the analysts, from sources that are not what one would call right leaning, all seem to miss this. Bias is what bias does, but hey, congrats on being modded up for expressing a liberal leaning view on slashdot. In other news, the sky is blue...
https://www.politifact.com/tru...
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Seriously the CIA and NSA openly^H^H^H^H admit to doing this sort of thing all the time when their officers retire and publish their memoirs... in books..... they write what they did as a spy in a book that people read after they retire.
Sadly you're a "low information" voter.
In most cases, like this, an NFC chip is correctly described as transponder, not transmitter. It's a passive device that responds to magnetic field, at lengths around half a feet. So the "transmitter" headline is clickbait unfit for a (former) tech-site. It also seems like classic red herring, nobody knows if the ball was equipped with other toys by Russia, focusing on a known passive transponder distracts from that. On the other hand I get the joke potential as world leaders tend to receive gifts at every meeting, and there are certainly existing protocols to protect them from eavesdropping, bombs etc. Of particular note in this context, the briefcase that follows POTUS around and contains all the nuclear missile launch codes etc. is known as the "nuclear football" making things weird for this particular analogy.
Putin is a trained KGB agent. You seriouly think he and his people would come up with something so obvious and stupid and easily detectable? Seriously?
The problem with the hysteria, both the anti-Trump and the anti-Russia one, is that it is a stupidity epidemic. It contains too much disdain and makes you underestimate them. Both. Trump, for all the spectacle and shouting, actually did a few things right. And Putin, whatever you think about him, is not an idiot.
I'm sure the Russians are spying on the Americans - just like vice versa. But they would be idiots to do it like this. Someone watched too many stupid Hollywood spy movies.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Wow, this is the second piece of clickbaity nonsense today. Not as bad as the Falcon rocket thing, but pretty annoying. In retrospect, the headlines kind of gave it away, but me-monkey clicked anyway. How about a service that lets people tag headlines as clickbait and learns from them, like a mail spam filter?
(Yoda voice) This is why you lost...
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"Yeah your side is just that bad."
Ha ha. You're a fucking idiot.
Agreed.
You go get Trump, I'll set up the gallows. Let's do this.
We had eight years of nothing but amateur hour with Obama
And the country was better for it in every metric. That doesn't bode well for every other government if you consider that one amateur.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
There are Trump-hating leftwing outlets in the US who are hyping this as a new anti-Trump meme: Trump so stupid Putin gave him a bugged ball right in front of the world.
To believe it, however, you have to be a doofus who wraps foil around his/her/its head and thinks places like CNN are providing "news".
Breaking News: Trump-Russia-Adidas Collusion!!!!!
The absolute total insanity of Hillary supporters seems to know no bounds. The election ended almost two years ago, and they still cannot wrap their brains around it. They were so sure Hillary would win and Trump could not that they rigged their own Democrat primary to make sure she and not Bernie was the nominee, then they rigged the FBI investigation so that Hillary was not prosecuted for a long list of felonies, then they took a piece of Hillary campaign propaganda her team bought from a foreign spy who got it from Russians and used it to start a fake investigation of Trump to blow him to bits---- and Hillary STILL lost. I suppose their complete meltdown is a bit understandable now that I review what happened...
As much as I hate having to defend Trump & Co, it's not like Obama & Co all that much better when they were in power. Despite many promises under Obama's watch the rich still payed way less than what they should, the oil industry were not only allowed to continue to expand their "fracking" operations with little regard to the environment, but also continue having an exception to environmental protection laws like the Clean Water Act (which absolutely baffles me personally), the war on drugs and terror only escalated, old import tariffs like the 25% "chicken tax" on light trucks, cemented in place by Lyndon B Johnson to win over special interests, were left completely untouched, allowed the SEC to be staffed by the sector it's supposed to be a watchdog and regulator of along with mass dragnet spying and general privacy violations reaching an absolute staggering all time high as shown by the Snowden leaks. Hell, even Obama's much praised net neutrality rules required mass outrage to get put in place.
When you consider all of this, Trump & Co really aren't that big of a step backwards. Maybe I'm just a bitter Bernie Sanders supporter, but at least I'm capable of seeing the flaws in Obama's slightly-less-corrupt government.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Putin was actually introducing Russia Pay. You pay with your balls.
Yep, Obama solved climate change, fixed healthcare, outmaneuvered Russia in Crimea and Syria and Ukraine, properly regulated wall street, reversed income inequality trajectory, ended disastrous globalist free trade agreements like the TPP, set race relations on the right track, and reigned in the treasonous security agencies who constantly lie and fabricate evidence to get the country involved in war and conflict.
Oh wait no, the opposite of all those things. No hope, no change.
If Putin has Trump by the balls, then he really sucks as a negotiator because Trump doesn't seem to be helping Russia much at all. If I were Putin, I'd expect a little more out of my minion.
Not to mention a peaceful North Korea...
Oh wait, that was President Trump, too.
Everything in my world has to be either one extreme or the other extreme, there can't be ANY COMPROMISES of any kind!
Fuck off. I can't even tell anymore which of you are just the garden-variety trolls and which of you really as as fucktardedly stupid as you sound.
I call 'em like I see 'em. If you're going to make fucktarded statements like some genetic throwback, then maybe you are. Besides, it's not like anyone pulls their punches with me or anyone else, so why the fuck shouldn't I? BTW you're likely another fucktarded Trumpite therefore you can fuck ott too.
Listen, buddy: I may have voted for Obama, but I far from agreed with everything he did, and assuming (like the fucktard a few above you here) that everything has to be extremes in one direction or the other is just fucked up, too. I voted for Obama because the alternative was even worse. But I didn't agree with or wanted the ACA, I think it's wrong to force someone to purchase something they may not want or need or can really afford; it's a drain on me financially, personally. I also don't agree with the way he handled some foreign matters. But meanwhile, just like always, because the wheels of government turn very slowly, Trump is taking credit for things Obama did that are just showing their positive effects now, and by the way let's be honest about it: the Bush Administration more or less took a sledgehammer to the toilets (so to speak) when they left office, leaving Obama with a gods-be-damned mess to clean up, and in the middle of a recession (which one could argue was because of so many years of one Bush or the other) so he was way down in the red just to start with, and I think that being considered he did a pretty damned good job overall even if I didn't agree with everything he did or said. Meanwhile Donald Trump is trying to drag the United States back to about 1940 socially and poltically, he keeps appointing extremists of one degree or another, many of which are flat-out corrupt, most of which seem to have their own agendas that have nothing to do with serving the United States of America, and he's about as untrustworthy overall as anyone could possibly be. I didn't vote for the son of a bitch, I didn't vote for Clinton because I don't trust her either (but I may as well have), I voted for the Green Party candidate (who was it, even, I don't even remember now!) because so far as I'm concerned you MUST vote. But I'm not going to sit here and listen to someone talking to ***ME*** like I'm some robot that just repeats what he's told to repeat, I was not affililated with ANY political party before about 3 months ago and now I HAVE to be Democrat to help restore some sense of balance to this countrys' government, which if you didn't notice has gone COMPLETELY out-of-balance, and like a poorly loaded washing machine on spin-cycle it's threatening to tear itself apart because half or less of the people in this country are having their interests addressed, the rest are functionally-speaking being told to FUCK OFF and quite frankly that makes me wonder if there's going to BE a country much longer. So excuse me if I'm not going to sit on my hands like some fucking coward and keep my mouth shut, I'll make all the noise I want to about this, it's my DUTY as a citizen of this country to utilize my right to freedom of speech and speak out about things I think are wrong. I don't HAVE to 'suppor the president' or his Administration, that's not what this country is about, it's not a dictatorship, dissent is part of our national DNA, and I'll be damned if anyone on either side of the aisle is going to hush me up just because they don't like what I have to say.
Has the idiot had security check the firmware on the chip, to see whether it's *only* broadcasting what it's supposed to?
I can just see it now, Putin visits the WH, and puts a collar and leash on Trumpolini, and walks him around the WH.
I don't see why we can't lump the trolls in with the stupid here. Fuck both of those crowds.
Sure, that all sounds good and dandy, and no one would argue we don't need some rigorous environmental protection. The real problem is these government agencies (FBI, EPA, etc, etc) have gone unchecked, unchallenged, and unmanaged for so long they have become corrupt versions of what we hope them to be. To your next point, sometimes balance is only achieved from bouncing from one 'extreme' to another, but I don't feel either end is really as extreme as we make them out to be.
In the Soviet Russia, Adidas Spies on You!
Rosebud! Rosebud. Rosebud...
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
So you start off by saying you don't want one extreme or another, then at the end you basically say "I'm an extremist". Well played.
There are powerful people that make a great deal of money with problems in the country. People that would have to get a real job if it weren't for their manufactured crisis.
Take the whole mother/child separation bullshit. This happens every day to American women when they go to jail. Yet somehow it's not supposed to happen to an illegal that broke the law coming into the country? Why? It's a lie wrapped up in a moral argument.
North Korea is peaceful? How? The same government, still has nuclear weapons, still develops delivery systems, still executes political prisoners. What has changed?
You're against racism but have no problem using racial slurs. Do you see the issue there?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Is this a sly joke about Russia making Trump president and putting him in charge of the nuclear football? 'Balls in your court, don't start a nuclear war.'