From the various links in TFA, looks like somebody ODâ(TM)d, had a manila envelope, which surveillance (cams & mail routing info) tracked to sender. Repeat a few times, announce âoeWe are Coming for Youâ and âoeDarknet is not Safeâ coordinated press releases.
Meh. Physical delivery is definitely the weak link in the DNM chain. I blame government-monopoly mail systems.
I came here to find the one thing I figured my fellow Slashdot geeks would be on top of: the technical details of how these people were de-anonymized. Another JavaScript exploit? Tor flaw? What? Instead I see pages of tired debate about drug legalization that I could get on any Facebook post.
I want the tech details. Any pointers?
So, if Wikileaks or a similar group publishes thousands of emails from a political candidate's server, is that "misinformation?" Or... "*unauthorized* information?"
> I have introverted engineers that think writing down a question is a sign of weakness, and are deathly afraid of asking a question over the phone
First, make sure you're dealing 1-on-1 with them, not in a group/scrum situation. Try doing pair programming with them. Be sure to chat about non-tech stuff, get them comfortable with you. Be sure and ask *them* questions, give them a chance to assert their intelligence and utility for you.
No doubt though, "management by walking around" is powerful and useful.
I've been managing remote teams for a decade and a half. My direct reports are in Mexico, India, and the East and West Coasts of the USA. Frankly it's very straightforward. I talk in real-time to each direct every day, via webconf or phone. People are available in chat or pick up a quick webconf at any reasonable hour in their local timezone. Sure, as a manager I wind up having some calls at 6AM and others at 9PM, but I'm OK with that, especially since I can usually WfH as well. Not spending the time driving to and from the office, not getting bugged by office chit-chat, being able to go directly from bed to the keyboard and back without breaking stride; these are *huge* productivity improvements. Being able to take a 10-minute catnap when I'm not otherwise feeling productive (eg after lunch) is also an incredible boon; you can't take a 10 minute nap in an open-design office without looking like a slacker, even if you need a nap because you work 10 hour days. The fact that my employer let me work from home most days more than made up for my otherwise lower-than-market salary. I didn't look elsewhere and continued to work hard because I liked the job.
At least, all that was true until last year, when our executive VP decided WfH was strictly prohibited because "agile one-team!" Now I'm forced to drive to the office and sit next to people who I don't actually work with, wasting gas and time for appearances, rather than focusing on my actual work output. Meanwhile I still have direct reports in radically different timezones. Needless to say, I'm looking elsewhere for a more sane employer. Best time to look for a job, is when you already have one...
This!! I cannot get over how people think AI is new. Deep Learning is really just a minor addition to neural nets, taking advantage of our modern fast chips to add convolution operations to the mix. But neural nets are old tech. Brooks' paper Intelligence without representation and Minksy's Perceptrons both came out in 1969
the thieves could turn a massive profit in an untraceable currency
Bitcoin is not "untraceable", else many companies like IBM, Oracle, and a slew of startups would not be selling blockchain analytics tools. There are unraceable cryprocurrencies, like Monero and ZCash. But Bitcoin? No.
Very true. Marketing all too often trumps good technical design. For example, Beta beat VHS because pr0n was on VHS. For another example, Dash is out-marketing lots of cryptocurrencies that are actually scalable like Ripple or actually private like Monero. One of these days someone using Dash "privatesend" is going to jail.
No sense mining BTC with them; ASIC farms have pretty much made it impossible to find blocks with anything but specialized hardware. There are cryptocurrencies whose mining function is specifically designed to be ASIC-resistant and therefore which are still profitable to CPU mine. Monero is probably the most popular of them (and has the benefit of an encrypted blockchain, so others can't see the wallet to which your botnet is sending its ill-mined coins)
Fair enough. The wise criminal, therefore, will store something illegal in the first encrypted container. Pirated movies, say, or evidence of a low-level white-collar crime. Something that will carry a fine, maybe even a short incarceration (likely served in parole since this is a first time after all). The prosecutor gets *something*, and a few weeks or months later, the operation is back on line and the oxycontin continues to flow
Better yet, use VeraCrypt and store an encrypted volume undetectably inside an encrypted volume. Now you can say, "oh darn you got me, here is the decryption key" and they get access to all your gramma's super-secret recipies. And have literally no way of knowing about the extra encrypted volume
As you noted, with a tumbler you are trusting that the people running the service aren't malicious actors (a government or other organized crime racket, ha ha). But there are cryptocurrencies -- notably Monero -- that have such mixing built into the protocol itself. no reliance on a benevolent 3rd party
This is why more and more darknet marketplaces are accepting Monero. It's like having a mixer built in to the protocol itself. And to make things even better, the Monero blockchain is itself encrypted. Unless you are one of the participants in a transaction, you can't see what address the coins were sent from, who they were sent to, or how much was sent. And they are in the process of integrating with i2p for even better anonymity.
Disclaimer: I hold quite a bit of Monero. But that's because I honestly think it's the best and fastest-growing "privacy cryptocurrency"
Fair enough. I know for some work -- especially detailed architecting/design work -- even a 15-minute meeting can spoil a whole day.
Uninterrupted time for constant attention is an incredibly scarce resource, and being "in the zone" can't be turned on and off like a lightbulb. If someone is in that mode, of course I'm sympathetic to it. Bear in mind that the OP was about employees who have a hard time staying on task when not in the office.
Also note that in my post above I didn't say "meetings"; I said "real-time interaction". For those employees having a hard time staying on task, you bet a daily chat with the boss or co-workers about what needs to be done and how to remove roadblocks is supremely useful.
Actually, it does matter. You the employer should offer (1) family counseling and (2) rehab, as medical benefits, or (3) more challenging work, since the fantasy baseball hobby is apparently more rewarding than the "productive" bullshit work you do.
You're quite right on the first two, of course. Counselling / rehab services are the right way to deal with family and substance issues. With respect to fantasy baseball and other distractions, I'd find it hard to give something more challenging to someone who's not able to get other presumably easier things done in a timely, high-quality fashion. If the employee specifically says they're bored with the current tasks, then sure, give them more and harder stuff to do -- provisionally, and make sure someone can catch the ball if this person who is already flaking drops it. Don't impact the customers just because internal styaffing issues.
The work has to get done and the employees need to be able to produce, or else make way for someone who can.
If you can't be bothered to invest in the wellbeing of your employees so that they can produce, then you're a soulless objectivist scumbag, and your company deserves to cease to exist immediately. FUCK YOU.
Well, someone's a bit sensitive on the topic. I'm not saying don't invest in people or help them succeed; I'm saying, if somebody consistently can't get work done in reasonable time at acceptable quality, they have to go. What is more fair, make everyone else work harder to carry their load? Collectivism generally doesn't incentivize people well for exactly this reason. At the end of the day, what matters is happy customers. Unless of course you're in a monopolistic situation where customers have no choice; the most extreme example of which is a government-provided service, in which people have to pay for it via taxes or else men with guns show up and *make* them pay. Not very ethical, that.
Same way to get "the undisciplined" to function in the face of any other adversity/distraction/what-have-you.
Do you have a daily interaction with your staff, such as a daily scrum? If not, that's your problem, you need frequent real-time interaction. It used to be called "management by walking around" and it's extremely effective. Nowadays it could be literally in-person walking around, or via video/webconf, or IM/slack, or via phone/Skype. Just make sure it's regular so people can plan for it, and make it real-time interactive. Make it in person or mandatory video at least once in a while. If in person, offer food. Even just coffee & donuts goes a long way.
Are there people who don't show up to those meetings, or who always seem to have an excuse, or just can't seem to get their shit done, or consistently produce poor-quality product? It doesn't matter whether their problem is family trouble, drugs/alcohol, or too much fantasy baseball. The work has to get done and the employees need to be able to produce, or else make way for someone who can. Those are good people to put on a buddy system (oh wait it's called "Agile" these days, right?) Make sure to give them clear realistic targets and deadlines, and let them know that if they are not met, they're not welcome to stay (and if they are met, they're fine).
Personally my executive VP drank some kind of kool-aide a few months ago, and decided that everybody has to work in the office 3-4 days a week. I'd been working from home 4 days a week for the past 12 years, during which time I got a house 45 mins from the office. I generally work 10+ hour days, despite being salaried. The loss in productivity having to drive to the office, deal with people who have too much free time and want to stop by to chat, etc, etc, is immense. I wear headphones all day so I can concentrate; most of the people I work with are thousands of miles away and we're in constant contact via webconf, IM, phone, and email. Having to come to the office is... incredibly counterproductive for me.
Come back:)
There are now two NH State Reps who are registered Libertarian (no other state has any, AFAIK), and of course dozens of State Reps who are hardcore libertarians but registered in the (R) and (D) parties. Why bang your head against the Empire State's brick wall?
If you're looking to roll back government, you should seriously consider the Free State Project. By concentrating likeminded people in one state, and getting literally dozens of them elected, we are making real changes, NOW
Wish I had mod points for the parent. These posts were to private groups. So... How did Harvard know about them? Do they join all the FB groups of every potential undregrad? Do they have some special tap to the FB data so as to read content in groups of which they are not a member? What?
Slashdot Mirror
Published by a former New Hampshire Legislator. Live Free or Die!
Billyâ(TM)s Reward
From the various links in TFA, looks like somebody ODâ(TM)d, had a manila envelope, which surveillance (cams & mail routing info) tracked to sender. Repeat a few times, announce âoeWe are Coming for Youâ and âoeDarknet is not Safeâ coordinated press releases. Meh. Physical delivery is definitely the weak link in the DNM chain. I blame government-monopoly mail systems.
I came here to find the one thing I figured my fellow Slashdot geeks would be on top of: the technical details of how these people were de-anonymized. Another JavaScript exploit? Tor flaw? What? Instead I see pages of tired debate about drug legalization that I could get on any Facebook post. I want the tech details. Any pointers?
So, if Wikileaks or a similar group publishes thousands of emails from a political candidate's server, is that "misinformation?" Or ... "*unauthorized* information?"
My employer went Full Cloud, so I made this meme
(apologies for dupe post, slashcode issues)
There is a reason the darknet markets are rapidly moving away from Bitcoin and into Monero
SHUM
> I have introverted engineers that think writing down a question is a sign of weakness, and are deathly afraid of asking a question over the phone First, make sure you're dealing 1-on-1 with them, not in a group/scrum situation. Try doing pair programming with them. Be sure to chat about non-tech stuff, get them comfortable with you. Be sure and ask *them* questions, give them a chance to assert their intelligence and utility for you. No doubt though, "management by walking around" is powerful and useful.
I've been managing remote teams for a decade and a half. My direct reports are in Mexico, India, and the East and West Coasts of the USA. Frankly it's very straightforward. I talk in real-time to each direct every day, via webconf or phone. People are available in chat or pick up a quick webconf at any reasonable hour in their local timezone. Sure, as a manager I wind up having some calls at 6AM and others at 9PM, but I'm OK with that, especially since I can usually WfH as well. Not spending the time driving to and from the office, not getting bugged by office chit-chat, being able to go directly from bed to the keyboard and back without breaking stride; these are *huge* productivity improvements. Being able to take a 10-minute catnap when I'm not otherwise feeling productive (eg after lunch) is also an incredible boon; you can't take a 10 minute nap in an open-design office without looking like a slacker, even if you need a nap because you work 10 hour days. The fact that my employer let me work from home most days more than made up for my otherwise lower-than-market salary. I didn't look elsewhere and continued to work hard because I liked the job.
At least, all that was true until last year, when our executive VP decided WfH was strictly prohibited because "agile one-team!" Now I'm forced to drive to the office and sit next to people who I don't actually work with, wasting gas and time for appearances, rather than focusing on my actual work output. Meanwhile I still have direct reports in radically different timezones. Needless to say, I'm looking elsewhere for a more sane employer. Best time to look for a job, is when you already have one...
RIP to the man who invented Rock n' Roll... but then got left behind :'(
This!! I cannot get over how people think AI is new. Deep Learning is really just a minor addition to neural nets, taking advantage of our modern fast chips to add convolution operations to the mix. But neural nets are old tech. Brooks' paper Intelligence without representation and Minksy's Perceptrons both came out in 1969
Nice sig! I don't know why I call him Gerold
Quoth TFA:
Bitcoin is not "untraceable", else many companies like IBM, Oracle, and a slew of startups would not be selling blockchain analytics tools. There are unraceable cryprocurrencies, like Monero and ZCash. But Bitcoin? No.
Very true. Marketing all too often trumps good technical design. For example, Beta beat VHS because pr0n was on VHS. For another example, Dash is out-marketing lots of cryptocurrencies that are actually scalable like Ripple or actually private like Monero. One of these days someone using Dash "privatesend" is going to jail.
Monero is where the darknet markets are moving to, away from Bitcoin. The blockchain is itself encrypted, and soon it will be integrated with I2P
No sense mining BTC with them; ASIC farms have pretty much made it impossible to find blocks with anything but specialized hardware. There are cryptocurrencies whose mining function is specifically designed to be ASIC-resistant and therefore which are still profitable to CPU mine. Monero is probably the most popular of them (and has the benefit of an encrypted blockchain, so others can't see the wallet to which your botnet is sending its ill-mined coins)
Fair enough. The wise criminal, therefore, will store something illegal in the first encrypted container. Pirated movies, say, or evidence of a low-level white-collar crime. Something that will carry a fine, maybe even a short incarceration (likely served in parole since this is a first time after all). The prosecutor gets *something*, and a few weeks or months later, the operation is back on line and the oxycontin continues to flow
Better yet, use VeraCrypt and store an encrypted volume undetectably inside an encrypted volume. Now you can say, "oh darn you got me, here is the decryption key" and they get access to all your gramma's super-secret recipies. And have literally no way of knowing about the extra encrypted volume
As you noted, with a tumbler you are trusting that the people running the service aren't malicious actors (a government or other organized crime racket, ha ha). But there are cryptocurrencies -- notably Monero -- that have such mixing built into the protocol itself. no reliance on a benevolent 3rd party
This is why more and more darknet marketplaces are accepting Monero. It's like having a mixer built in to the protocol itself. And to make things even better, the Monero blockchain is itself encrypted. Unless you are one of the participants in a transaction, you can't see what address the coins were sent from, who they were sent to, or how much was sent. And they are in the process of integrating with i2p for even better anonymity.
Disclaimer: I hold quite a bit of Monero. But that's because I honestly think it's the best and fastest-growing "privacy cryptocurrency"
Fair enough. I know for some work -- especially detailed architecting/design work -- even a 15-minute meeting can spoil a whole day.
Uninterrupted time for constant attention is an incredibly scarce resource, and being "in the zone" can't be turned on and off like a lightbulb. If someone is in that mode, of course I'm sympathetic to it. Bear in mind that the OP was about employees who have a hard time staying on task when not in the office.
Also note that in my post above I didn't say "meetings"; I said "real-time interaction". For those employees having a hard time staying on task, you bet a daily chat with the boss or co-workers about what needs to be done and how to remove roadblocks is supremely useful.
Actually, it does matter. You the employer should offer (1) family counseling and (2) rehab, as medical benefits, or (3) more challenging work, since the fantasy baseball hobby is apparently more rewarding than the "productive" bullshit work you do.
You're quite right on the first two, of course. Counselling / rehab services are the right way to deal with family and substance issues. With respect to fantasy baseball and other distractions, I'd find it hard to give something more challenging to someone who's not able to get other presumably easier things done in a timely, high-quality fashion. If the employee specifically says they're bored with the current tasks, then sure, give them more and harder stuff to do -- provisionally, and make sure someone can catch the ball if this person who is already flaking drops it. Don't impact the customers just because internal styaffing issues.
The work has to get done and the employees need to be able to produce, or else make way for someone who can.
If you can't be bothered to invest in the wellbeing of your employees so that they can produce, then you're a soulless objectivist scumbag, and your company deserves to cease to exist immediately. FUCK YOU.
Well, someone's a bit sensitive on the topic. I'm not saying don't invest in people or help them succeed; I'm saying, if somebody consistently can't get work done in reasonable time at acceptable quality, they have to go. What is more fair, make everyone else work harder to carry their load? Collectivism generally doesn't incentivize people well for exactly this reason. At the end of the day, what matters is happy customers. Unless of course you're in a monopolistic situation where customers have no choice; the most extreme example of which is a government-provided service, in which people have to pay for it via taxes or else men with guns show up and *make* them pay. Not very ethical, that.
Same way to get "the undisciplined" to function in the face of any other adversity/distraction/what-have-you.
Do you have a daily interaction with your staff, such as a daily scrum? If not, that's your problem, you need frequent real-time interaction. It used to be called "management by walking around" and it's extremely effective. Nowadays it could be literally in-person walking around, or via video/webconf, or IM/slack, or via phone/Skype. Just make sure it's regular so people can plan for it, and make it real-time interactive. Make it in person or mandatory video at least once in a while. If in person, offer food. Even just coffee & donuts goes a long way.
Are there people who don't show up to those meetings, or who always seem to have an excuse, or just can't seem to get their shit done, or consistently produce poor-quality product? It doesn't matter whether their problem is family trouble, drugs/alcohol, or too much fantasy baseball. The work has to get done and the employees need to be able to produce, or else make way for someone who can. Those are good people to put on a buddy system (oh wait it's called "Agile" these days, right?) Make sure to give them clear realistic targets and deadlines, and let them know that if they are not met, they're not welcome to stay (and if they are met, they're fine).
Personally my executive VP drank some kind of kool-aide a few months ago, and decided that everybody has to work in the office 3-4 days a week. I'd been working from home 4 days a week for the past 12 years, during which time I got a house 45 mins from the office. I generally work 10+ hour days, despite being salaried. The loss in productivity having to drive to the office, deal with people who have too much free time and want to stop by to chat, etc, etc, is immense. I wear headphones all day so I can concentrate; most of the people I work with are thousands of miles away and we're in constant contact via webconf, IM, phone, and email. Having to come to the office is... incredibly counterproductive for me.
Come back :)
There are now two NH State Reps who are registered Libertarian (no other state has any, AFAIK), and of course dozens of State Reps who are hardcore libertarians but registered in the (R) and (D) parties. Why bang your head against the Empire State's brick wall?
If you're looking to roll back government, you should seriously consider the Free State Project. By concentrating likeminded people in one state, and getting literally dozens of them elected, we are making real changes, NOW
Wish I had mod points for the parent. These posts were to private groups. So... How did Harvard know about them? Do they join all the FB groups of every potential undregrad? Do they have some special tap to the FB data so as to read content in groups of which they are not a member? What?