About 4 months ago I stopped using plastic for everything and started using cash as much as possible because of constant security breaches like this one. I'm recommending in the strongest words possible that everyone do the same, unless you really want to continually expose yourself to the threat of having your bank accounts drained and/or credit cards maxed out and/or identity stolen. The more you use plastic the more exposed you are and there's no getting around that anymore, and the situation is not going to improve until they find a way to prevent these incursions from happening in the first place. At this point in time the minimal risk of maybe getting mugged for $100 in your wallet is far less than getting your entire LIFE 'virtually mugged' by some cybercriminal organization that rapes all your accounts and rapes you for your identity, ruining your life completely.
Face the facts: You're paying for the 'privilege' of having an always-connected surveillance device in your home (or several of them). You're feeding it your very perosnal information and somehow expecting that to stay private. You think when you 'mute' the microphones that it's not listening, but it likely is. I'm sorry to have to be so blunt about it but if you are buying one of these devices you are not at all being smart. The only smart move here is to never buy one in the first place. Seriously, ask yourself: why do you need one in the first place? Rhetorical question, you don't need one, you WANT one because it's a shiny toy. Now you'll tell me "it's convenient". Tough shit, your 'convenience' should never be placed higher on your list of priorities in life above your safety, and it is not safe to have one of these devices in your home, you are literally giving away the most personal and private information about your lives that you possibly could, and unless you literally unplug it's power supply when you're not actively using it, you are throwing away the last outpost of privacy in your lives: YOUR HOME, because it is always listening.
It's about damned time someone did something to rein in drone owners who refuse to be responsible with their toys. I hope there are many arrests and confiscations of drones from people who think they're above the law; they'll serve as examples to the rest of you who are not responsible that playtime is over and you'll either have to obey the law and be responsible or face the consequences.
Needless to say I'm going to draw all sorts of fire from entitled drone owners who think they can do whatever the hell they want with their toys; your angry comments are music to my ears, you're just outing yourselves as the irresponsible ones who have brought all this regulation down on everyones heads.
To the rest of you who have been responsible drone owners up to this point: Don't attack ME, attack the irresponsible ones who have brought all this heavy-handed regulation and unwanted attention down on you and your hobby. Don't kill the messenger (me) go beat on THEM instead, THEY deserve it.
I'm getting real sick and tired of people thinking that the crap they keep trotting out that they call 'AI' is some god-like superintelligence that can do everything and anything; it cannot and it's not going to anytime soon, if EVER; none of this shit can actually THINK so it's not going to do even HALF the things people keep asking about. Until we solve the riddle of cognition and real self-awareness in our own brains, we are NOT going to be building machines that can do that, too, FULL STOP.
Can you put an antenna on your house and be happy with OTA broadcast instead? I've always got more to watch than I have time for, and although I won't pay for streaming either, you could do that, too, and get pretty much everything you want.
You know what? So long as the end result is the same in this case (Equifax execs in orange jumpsuits for years to come) the details don't matter to me much. Find who is responsible for this unmitigated disaster and crucify them.
My opinion? This is what happens when you have BEAN COUNTERS and PAPER SHUFFLERS making engineering decisions, instead of engineers and other educated, qualified personnel!
So, what do we do now? The management at Equifax has now proven beyond any reasonable doubt that they are completely incompetent, totally incapable of being responsible for the data they collect. Who takes over? Can the government come in and take control? Or would that be worse? Who needs to be in charge at Equifax to stop the bleeding and secure their systems?
Furthermore: The incompetence now evident should, in my opinion, be considered criminal negligence, considering how many people are affected, and by 'affected' I mean 'potentially or in fact having their lives RUINED'. Round up the management at Equifax, everyone who was responsible for the decisions that led us to this point, put them under arrest, and bring criminal indictments against them. I'd much rather prefer severed heads on poles lining Wall Street, but we don't do that sort of thing in this country so I'll settle for mandatory jail time, megafines, seizing of assets, and court orders prohibiting these idiots from ever working in the finance industry ever again -- or anywhere else that can affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people. I'm sure Walmart would just love to have them as greeters, or maybe the Jiffy Lube down the street will hire them.
I've been adamantly against smartphones in general for a number of reasons but security (and the lack thereof) has always been at the top of that list; this potentially changes that. However, what will this device cost? I've seen nothing about that.
I'm going to start with a quote from an AC, because some of you block AC's even if they're modded up to +5:
"Violent criminal organizations" are the last thing on their minds when making these arguments. They want to go after dissent, after whistleblowers. They want to stalk their exes, commit industrial espionage and blackmail. They want to track the best moments to rape and murder, or to be able to plant evidence without alibis making their so-called discoveries as obviously fake as they can be.
These powers would not and will never be used to make citizens or the country safer in any way, even if it could be used in this fashion. If there were any chance they could, they would never pursue them.
I actually couldn't have said it any better myself. Go search in the recent news; Trump has been openly hunting down regular citizens who have spoken out against him. Why would he do that if not to persecute them, perhaps to the point of false charges being raised against them, as a punitive action for DARING to speak out against the Great and Mighty Donald J. Trump, (LOL)? Note also that way too many people get into 'law enforcement' because they have Power Fantasies about subjugating (bullying, whatever you want to call it) whoever they please to, and apparently there are way too many closeted White Supremacists in law enforcement, if you take the frequency of young black men being shot to death for no damned good reason as any indicator of that.
Nope, banning encryption (or destroying it's effectiveness, same difference really) isn't going to make anyone in this country safer or reduce crime or terrorism or effectively prosecute offenders, it's going to be just one more step towards a TOTAL POLICE STATE where there is no such thing as 'Freedom', not unless you're a COP, or you're RICH. So FUCK THEM and their 'aggressive stance' (read as: BULLYING) in getting tech companies to breach citizens' devices.
Yeah, sure thing buddy, let's never financially encourage new technologies that could benefit more or less everyone in the entire goddamned country, let's just let it die out and keep throwing money at 200 year old technology that pollutes the ever-loving fuck out of the air and that is dangerous as hell to produce the fuel for in the first place, great idea. The 19th Century called, they want their energy plan back. Fool. Get a clue already.
Or, better yet, don't use Microsoft Windows at all. If you want to feel more secure then make the tradeoffs to get away from Microsoft operating systems and other software. Note I'm being honest about it: You'll have to make some compromises to make it happen. But if you want control of the hardware you own and control over access to your data and communications, then that's what you're going to have to do, plain and simple. Use encrypted communications to prevent as much spying over the Internet as you can, too, or just never use the Internet for sensitive communications at all, either. You CAN take back your privacy and control of your life; the price you'll pay for that is loss of some convenience. Choose wisely.
What's next? Penalize solar and wind and other renewables? Tax people who already have solar panels on their houses and businesses? All so some ass-backwards, mostly dead already coal industry can hang on for a while longer? When will this insanity end?
No no no.. you think I'm talking about Communism or Socialism and I'm really not. I'm not talking about any government 'allocating' anything. All I'm really talking about, for starters, is removing the idea of 'profit' as a motivator. People are still paid what they're worth -- but nobody is hoarding wealth for the sake of hoarding wealth (and using it to weild power over others). Anything that used to be considered 'profit' is rolled back into improving things for everyone. I have no idea off the top of my head how this would functionally work; maybe the way 'employee-owned' businesses work?
Yeah no kidding.
The CDP1802 with a 2kB integer BASIC interpreter and 8kB of static RAM I built back in the early 80's on perfboard is starting to look pretty good right now.
Friend, I'm tired of people not reading (and comprehending!) what I write -- and then making comments based on their incomplete or incorrect understanding.
Nowhere did I say 'a world where EVERYTHING IS FREE'. I'm talking about a world where the BASICS -- food, water, shelter, clothing, access to energy sources, communication, healthcare, and medicines -- are inexpensive (**OR** free, if technologies progressed enough to allow for that!) instead of EVERYTHING in those categories having their prices jacked up all the way to the Moon, just because some jackass(es) can get away with it, so they can line their pockets.
Are we there yet? NO, WE ARE NOT -- but thinking about and talking about an idea is what gets peoples imaginations going -- and you get enough people doing THAT, and maybe someone invents ways that it can be made reality! Do you get it now? Plodding along on the same treadmill you've always been on and never thinking about how something could be different is what perpetuates bad situations.
Consider this, while you're at it: Many of the really great, transformative inventions and changes that have occurred throughout human history started with ONE MAN with an idea that everyone else said was 'crazy' and 'impossible''; we invented flying machines when everyone said that was impossible; we went to the MOON, repeatedly, and at some point everyone said that was crazy and impossible; we found cures for devastating diseases that everyone thought would never be cured; everyone said having a video telephone in your pocket was just silly stuff from comic books, but we're carrying them around with us right now. Saying we'll never have a 'post scarcity world' or a world where capitalism doesn't rule everything is ridiculous, but never believing anything can be different is what keeps things in a state of status quo.
See, you just failed completely at even imagining a world where things are not like that. Imagine a post-scarcity world, where the things that are necessary for life are produced by not-for-profit companies. I'm not talking about any bad-at-basic-math-UBI nonsense, either, I'm talking about a world where money and power are not the prime motivating factors in everybodys lives. Things and services necessary for life to continue are either inexpensive or free. You'd still work if you felt you wanted to or needed to, but you'd have the basics. Luxuries would be another matter, but since you wouldn't have everyone desperately trying to separate you from your paycheck for every little thing you needed just to survive and have a roof over your head, you'd have more to spend on those things.
I'm not going to sit here and say that I've got the whole thing figured out, or that it would even work for 7 billion people. But just continuing to recite a litany of "How things are right now are how they've always been and they'll always be this way" only leads you in a circle. Imaginging how things could be different is what drives change. Enough people get the same ideas and then you have a movement. Get enough people involved in a movement, and you could start chaning hearts and minds -- which is what actually makes things change. It's not something that happens overnight, or in a year, or even in a decade. But apathetically accepting "The Way Things Are" keeps you in the same rut, decade after decade.
Slashdot Mirror
About 4 months ago I stopped using plastic for everything and started using cash as much as possible because of constant security breaches like this one. I'm recommending in the strongest words possible that everyone do the same, unless you really want to continually expose yourself to the threat of having your bank accounts drained and/or credit cards maxed out and/or identity stolen. The more you use plastic the more exposed you are and there's no getting around that anymore, and the situation is not going to improve until they find a way to prevent these incursions from happening in the first place. At this point in time the minimal risk of maybe getting mugged for $100 in your wallet is far less than getting your entire LIFE 'virtually mugged' by some cybercriminal organization that rapes all your accounts and rapes you for your identity, ruining your life completely.
Face the facts: You're paying for the 'privilege' of having an always-connected surveillance device in your home (or several of them). You're feeding it your very perosnal information and somehow expecting that to stay private. You think when you 'mute' the microphones that it's not listening, but it likely is. I'm sorry to have to be so blunt about it but if you are buying one of these devices you are not at all being smart. The only smart move here is to never buy one in the first place. Seriously, ask yourself: why do you need one in the first place? Rhetorical question, you don't need one, you WANT one because it's a shiny toy. Now you'll tell me "it's convenient". Tough shit, your 'convenience' should never be placed higher on your list of priorities in life above your safety, and it is not safe to have one of these devices in your home, you are literally giving away the most personal and private information about your lives that you possibly could, and unless you literally unplug it's power supply when you're not actively using it, you are throwing away the last outpost of privacy in your lives: YOUR HOME, because it is always listening.
Stop being stupid, don't buy these things!
It's about damned time someone did something to rein in drone owners who refuse to be responsible with their toys. I hope there are many arrests and confiscations of drones from people who think they're above the law; they'll serve as examples to the rest of you who are not responsible that playtime is over and you'll either have to obey the law and be responsible or face the consequences.
Needless to say I'm going to draw all sorts of fire from entitled drone owners who think they can do whatever the hell they want with their toys; your angry comments are music to my ears, you're just outing yourselves as the irresponsible ones who have brought all this regulation down on everyones heads.
To the rest of you who have been responsible drone owners up to this point: Don't attack ME, attack the irresponsible ones who have brought all this heavy-handed regulation and unwanted attention down on you and your hobby. Don't kill the messenger (me) go beat on THEM instead, THEY deserve it.
I'm getting real sick and tired of people thinking that the crap they keep trotting out that they call 'AI' is some god-like superintelligence that can do everything and anything; it cannot and it's not going to anytime soon, if EVER; none of this shit can actually THINK so it's not going to do even HALF the things people keep asking about. Until we solve the riddle of cognition and real self-awareness in our own brains, we are NOT going to be building machines that can do that, too, FULL STOP.
less than before but still, some bots do insane port scanning
I took the liberty of fixing that for you. ;-)
Sure. But you'd think they'd be smarter than this. Whatever happened to basic OpSec?
'facepalm; facepalm'
Can you put an antenna on your house and be happy with OTA broadcast instead? I've always got more to watch than I have time for, and although I won't pay for streaming either, you could do that, too, and get pretty much everything you want.
You know what? So long as the end result is the same in this case (Equifax execs in orange jumpsuits for years to come) the details don't matter to me much. Find who is responsible for this unmitigated disaster and crucify them.
Comcast is sure sounding a lot like a monopoly right now.
Yes, I saw that, and all I can say about that is: Are you really surprised that the current administration would do something like that? I'm not.
My opinion? This is what happens when you have BEAN COUNTERS and PAPER SHUFFLERS making engineering decisions, instead of engineers and other educated, qualified personnel!
So, what do we do now? The management at Equifax has now proven beyond any reasonable doubt that they are completely incompetent, totally incapable of being responsible for the data they collect. Who takes over? Can the government come in and take control? Or would that be worse? Who needs to be in charge at Equifax to stop the bleeding and secure their systems?
Furthermore: The incompetence now evident should, in my opinion, be considered criminal negligence, considering how many people are affected, and by 'affected' I mean 'potentially or in fact having their lives RUINED'. Round up the management at Equifax, everyone who was responsible for the decisions that led us to this point, put them under arrest, and bring criminal indictments against them. I'd much rather prefer severed heads on poles lining Wall Street, but we don't do that sort of thing in this country so I'll settle for mandatory jail time, megafines, seizing of assets, and court orders prohibiting these idiots from ever working in the finance industry ever again -- or anywhere else that can affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people. I'm sure Walmart would just love to have them as greeters, or maybe the Jiffy Lube down the street will hire them.
Question: Do you think Tor would work on a phone like this? Or would wireless companies block Tor?
I've been adamantly against smartphones in general for a number of reasons but security (and the lack thereof) has always been at the top of that list; this potentially changes that. However, what will this device cost? I've seen nothing about that.
"Violent criminal organizations" are the last thing on their minds when making these arguments. They want to go after dissent, after whistleblowers. They want to stalk their exes, commit industrial espionage and blackmail. They want to track the best moments to rape and murder, or to be able to plant evidence without alibis making their so-called discoveries as obviously fake as they can be.
These powers would not and will never be used to make citizens or the country safer in any way, even if it could be used in this fashion. If there were any chance they could, they would never pursue them.
I actually couldn't have said it any better myself. Go search in the recent news; Trump has been openly hunting down regular citizens who have spoken out against him. Why would he do that if not to persecute them, perhaps to the point of false charges being raised against them, as a punitive action for DARING to speak out against the Great and Mighty Donald J. Trump, (LOL)? Note also that way too many people get into 'law enforcement' because they have Power Fantasies about subjugating (bullying, whatever you want to call it) whoever they please to, and apparently there are way too many closeted White Supremacists in law enforcement, if you take the frequency of young black men being shot to death for no damned good reason as any indicator of that.
Nope, banning encryption (or destroying it's effectiveness, same difference really) isn't going to make anyone in this country safer or reduce crime or terrorism or effectively prosecute offenders, it's going to be just one more step towards a TOTAL POLICE STATE where there is no such thing as 'Freedom', not unless you're a COP, or you're RICH. So FUCK THEM and their 'aggressive stance' (read as: BULLYING) in getting tech companies to breach citizens' devices.
*drops mic*
Yeah, sure thing buddy, let's never financially encourage new technologies that could benefit more or less everyone in the entire goddamned country, let's just let it die out and keep throwing money at 200 year old technology that pollutes the ever-loving fuck out of the air and that is dangerous as hell to produce the fuel for in the first place, great idea. The 19th Century called, they want their energy plan back. Fool. Get a clue already.
Or, better yet, don't use Microsoft Windows at all. If you want to feel more secure then make the tradeoffs to get away from Microsoft operating systems and other software. Note I'm being honest about it: You'll have to make some compromises to make it happen. But if you want control of the hardware you own and control over access to your data and communications, then that's what you're going to have to do, plain and simple. Use encrypted communications to prevent as much spying over the Internet as you can, too, or just never use the Internet for sensitive communications at all, either. You CAN take back your privacy and control of your life; the price you'll pay for that is loss of some convenience. Choose wisely.
What's next? Penalize solar and wind and other renewables? Tax people who already have solar panels on their houses and businesses? All so some ass-backwards, mostly dead already coal industry can hang on for a while longer? When will this insanity end?
No no no.. you think I'm talking about Communism or Socialism and I'm really not. I'm not talking about any government 'allocating' anything. All I'm really talking about, for starters, is removing the idea of 'profit' as a motivator. People are still paid what they're worth -- but nobody is hoarding wealth for the sake of hoarding wealth (and using it to weild power over others). Anything that used to be considered 'profit' is rolled back into improving things for everyone. I have no idea off the top of my head how this would functionally work; maybe the way 'employee-owned' businesses work?
Yeah no kidding.
The CDP1802 with a 2kB integer BASIC interpreter and 8kB of static RAM I built back in the early 80's on perfboard is starting to look pretty good right now.
Friend, I'm tired of people not reading (and comprehending!) what I write -- and then making comments based on their incomplete or incorrect understanding.
Nowhere did I say 'a world where EVERYTHING IS FREE'. I'm talking about a world where the BASICS -- food, water, shelter, clothing, access to energy sources, communication, healthcare, and medicines -- are inexpensive (**OR** free, if technologies progressed enough to allow for that!) instead of EVERYTHING in those categories having their prices jacked up all the way to the Moon, just because some jackass(es) can get away with it, so they can line their pockets.
Are we there yet? NO, WE ARE NOT -- but thinking about and talking about an idea is what gets peoples imaginations going -- and you get enough people doing THAT, and maybe someone invents ways that it can be made reality! Do you get it now? Plodding along on the same treadmill you've always been on and never thinking about how something could be different is what perpetuates bad situations.
Consider this, while you're at it: Many of the really great, transformative inventions and changes that have occurred throughout human history started with ONE MAN with an idea that everyone else said was 'crazy' and 'impossible''; we invented flying machines when everyone said that was impossible; we went to the MOON, repeatedly, and at some point everyone said that was crazy and impossible; we found cures for devastating diseases that everyone thought would never be cured; everyone said having a video telephone in your pocket was just silly stuff from comic books, but we're carrying them around with us right now. Saying we'll never have a 'post scarcity world' or a world where capitalism doesn't rule everything is ridiculous, but never believing anything can be different is what keeps things in a state of status quo.
I agree, " xxxJonBoyxxx" has brain problems. ;-)
See, you just failed completely at even imagining a world where things are not like that. Imagine a post-scarcity world, where the things that are necessary for life are produced by not-for-profit companies. I'm not talking about any bad-at-basic-math-UBI nonsense, either, I'm talking about a world where money and power are not the prime motivating factors in everybodys lives. Things and services necessary for life to continue are either inexpensive or free. You'd still work if you felt you wanted to or needed to, but you'd have the basics. Luxuries would be another matter, but since you wouldn't have everyone desperately trying to separate you from your paycheck for every little thing you needed just to survive and have a roof over your head, you'd have more to spend on those things.
I'm not going to sit here and say that I've got the whole thing figured out, or that it would even work for 7 billion people. But just continuing to recite a litany of "How things are right now are how they've always been and they'll always be this way" only leads you in a circle. Imaginging how things could be different is what drives change. Enough people get the same ideas and then you have a movement. Get enough people involved in a movement, and you could start chaning hearts and minds -- which is what actually makes things change. It's not something that happens overnight, or in a year, or even in a decade. But apathetically accepting "The Way Things Are" keeps you in the same rut, decade after decade.
So you're not old enough to legally drink?