Top Diaries

Hackers reportedly used a tool developed by the NSA to attack Baltimore's computer systems - The Verge

Since May 7th, the Baltimore's city government has been dealing with a ransomware attack that has shut down everything from its email to the systems that allow residents to pay water bills, purchase homes, and other services. According to a report in The New York Times, the tool that has crippled the city is a National Security Agency creation called EternalBlue, which has been used in other high-profile cyberattacks.

by Bernard (bernard) on Wed May 29th, 2019 at 07:04:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On DATA VISUALIZATION (none / 1)

Welcome to the world the incompetent Tech Bros of Silicon Valley have created.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Thu May 30th, 2019 at 01:41:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On DATA VISUALIZATION (none / 1)

Report: No 'Eternal Blue' Exploit Found in Baltimore City Ransomware
Perp still at large.
Baltimore ransomware attack crimped home sales for the month of May

It took two weeks for city and real estate officials to develop a manual workaround to check for liens and record deeds after the May 7 attack crippled city systems, temporarily bottling up home sales.

Baltimore won't be able to send water bills again this month as ransomware recovery continues

As the city continues to recover from the attack, Goldstein said officials expect that 95 percent of workers will have access to their computers, electronic documents and emails by the end of the week. The city's information technology teams are restoring the shared serves that house workers' documents and make sure they are secure.

A computer virus has thrown Philadelphia's court system into chaos

Since May 21st, a virus has shut down Philadelphia's online court system, bringing network access to a standstill. ... But there's little other information available: officials said that saying any more "could jeopardize the remediation process," but that they've contracted a cyber security firm to look into the problem.

< pick teeth, suck vigorously >

The damage is particularly severe in housing law. When a mortgaging bank tries to repossess a house (known as foreclosure), a defendant may file for a postponement before it's sold, asking to delay the process while they gather information to fight the decision. But amid the outage, those postponement filings are in danger of being lost in the chaos -- meaning that Philadelphia's cybersecurity problems could cause someone to lose their home unnecessarily.

2020 Census online is going to be great. Once the tubes are secured from Russian meddling and interference. 45% response rate. u betcha.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu Jun 13th, 2019 at 04:04:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]

"thousands of attacks worldwide"
Florida city pays $600,000 ransom to save computer records

The Riviera Beach City Council voted unanimously this week to pay the hackers' demands, believing the Palm Beach suburb had no choice if it wanted to retrieve its records, which the hackers encrypted. The council already voted to spend almost $1 million on new computers and hardware after hackers captured the city's system three weeks ago.

[X] opportunity -- phishing CRM employees

The hackers apparently got into the city's system when an employee clicked on an email link that allowed them to upload malware.

[ ] means -- not NSA Eternal Blue or Stuxnet, ebola, or 60K other "malware" monitored by MSFT
[X] motive

"We are relying on their (the consultants') advice," she said. The hackers demanded payment in the cryptocurrency bitcoin. While it is possible to trace bitcoins as they are spent, the owners of the accounts aren't necessarily known, making it a favored payment method in ransomware attacks.

[ ] suspects -- excluding Russian and Chinese spies

The U.S. government indicted two Iranians last year for allegedly unleashing more than 200 ransomware attacks, including against the cities of Atlanta and Newark, New Jersey. ... The federal government last year also accused a North Korean programmer of committing the "WannaCry" attack that infected government, bank, factory and hospital computers in 150 countries.

online 2020 Census is going to be GREAT! Once the citizen question is eliminated from "the system" and the tubes are secured. 45% response rate. Plus a paper trail of accurate ENUMERATION. u betcha.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu Jun 20th, 2019 at 01:53:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Police in Canada Are Tracking People's 'Negative' Behavior In a 'Risk' Database
One might imagine such a device in Canada were useless.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Sat Jun 1st, 2019 at 04:29:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]

SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK: Thomas, RBG align in 5-4 rulings

AP reporter discovers RULE OF LAW "data visualization", exculpates known and unknown professional colleagues' crazy-ass partisan prejudices. Laces AI RULE OF MAN with "human interest" detail.

Is this the start of something new?
Actually, no. Thomas and Ginsburg have been together in 42 cases in the court's closest outcomes during Ginsburg's nearly 26 years as a justice.
[...]
The two cases this term are a bit above the average of 1.6 times per term they have agreed in decisions in which there was a bare majority of five justices.
The numbers are courtesy of Adam Feldman, whose Empirical Scotus website runs all kinds of interesting numbers about the court.
ABOUT Optimized Legal Solutions LLC. "The extent of litigation in the U.S. is staggering..."

LEARN TO DECODE: elementary school "imparitality" and literary criticism

The justices themselves never tire of telling the public that their disagreements are not personal, even when their pointed opinions call out a colleague by name.

archived regression
Free Speech
the "ideological leanings" of the US Supreme Court over time

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu Jun 6th, 2019 at 07:35:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

San Francisco prosecutors turn to [redaction] to reduce racial ~~bias~~ prejudice

"The criminal-justice system has had a horrible impact on people of color in this country, especially African Americans, for generations," [DA George] Gascon said in an interview ahead of the announcement. "If all prosecutors took race out of the picture when making charging decisions, we would probably be in a much better place as a nation than we are today."
[...]
Gascon's office worked with data scientists and engineers at the Stanford Computational Policy Lab to develop a system that takes electronic police reports and automatically removes a suspect's name, race and hair and eye colors.

Where's the fun in that?
Kimbrough v. United States, 552 US 85 (2007)

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu Jun 13th, 2019 at 03:41:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Aid group: Most new Ebola cases were not known contacts

"As few as 32 percent of the new confirmed cases were linked back to known contacts," the group said in a statement. "This means that the listing of contacts and surveillance are not effective. Contact tracing is essential to control the evolution of the outbreak."
More than 1,200 people have now died in the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history.

archived annual report
ebola marketing UPDATE
escalation, morbidity & mortality, vectors, vaccine efficacy

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Tue May 28th, 2019 at 09:51:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On EBOLA (none / 0)

Alarm as Ebola outbreak reaches 2,000 cases, picks up speed

The deadly Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo has surpassed 2,000 cases and is picking up speed. ... The outbreak declared in August, the second-deadliest in history, has killed more than 1,300 people in a volatile region where rebel attacks and community resistance have hurt containment efforts. ... Each attack keeps health workers from the crucial work of vaccinating people and tracking thousands of contacts of victims. ... Misunderstandings have been high in a region that had never [?!] experienced an Ebola outbreak until now
[...]
Amid the challenges, WHO and others have pointed out signs of progress. Notably, more than 129,000 people have received an experimental but effective Ebola vaccine in its first widespread use.
[11 June 2018, unidentified vaccine]
She said the hospital never showed her records confirming he'd tested positive for the virus.
[...]
Congo's health ministry and the WHO rushed in 7,500 doses, created by the Public Health Agency of Canada and owned by Merck.
[...]
The vaccine must be kept at a temperature of minus 76 to minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 to minus 80 degrees Celsius), and can only be kept in mobile freezers for up to seven days.
[...]
Next year, Merck plans to seek approval of the vaccine from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, based on previous studies [?] of the shots. While the vaccine is[ not] being formally studied in the current Congo outbreak, regulatory authorities would want to know if unforeseen side effects crop up.
"If it's fully approved then in each outbreak it'll be the first measure and could be used all over the region," Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of the National Institute for Biomedical Research in Kinshasa told the AP.
In ["]West Africa["], a large study is underway that compares the Merck shot and a second vaccine candidate [?] made by Janssen Pharmaceuticals to determine best vaccination strategies and track how long [?!] protection lasts.

archived 4 May 2019
living lab 12 May 2018
Ebola Vaccines Shipped to Congo, WHO Chief Says; AFRICOM Gen.Thomas Waldhauser, Haley, Kabila 2017 bargaining

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Tue Jun 4th, 2019 at 06:20:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On EBOLA (none / 0)

Incidentally, the 2014 grilled-monkey-meat-on-a-stick-pathogen story is branching to favorable-climate-change-reservoir story. Developing ...

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu Jun 6th, 2019 at 07:43:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On EBOLA (none / 1)

UN health agency to remove controversial opioid guidelines

The pledge to remove the guidelines comes a month after U.S. Reps. Katherine Clark and Hal Rogers accused the WHO of being influenced by Purdue Pharma, the American manufacturer of the potent painkiller OxyContin.
[...]
The congressional report released last month tracked how doctors and organizations tied to Purdue, including many of the leading figures who worked to expand opioid prescribing in the United States in the 1990s, influenced the WHO document. ... Clark described it as a "playbook" that the pharmaceutical industry is taking abroad, and that the WHO was "lending the opioid industry its voice and credibility."
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, wrote to Clark and Rogers that the guidelines from 2011 and 2012 would be removed in "light of new scientific evidence that has emerged" and that the removal of the reports should address the allegations of conflicts of interest. Since the reports were first published, he wrote, the agency has strengthened its ethics polices.

preposterous. inconceivable. shocking. unprecedented. egregious.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu Jun 20th, 2019 at 09:43:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On the Planet (4.00 / 2)

In 1996 Terry Pratchett interviewed Bill Gates for GQ and accurately predicted how the internet would propagate and legitimise fake news. Gates didn't believe him. pic.twitter.com/MqjawT4NVV
— Marc Burrows⚡️ (@20thcenturymarc) 28. Mai 2019

by generic on Wed May 29th, 2019 at 06:44:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Wait, why the hell is the `race to 5G' even a race? - The Verge

Gates only believes those things that support his personal myth. Such as that he's a self-made success and is a brilliant policy maker.

by rifek on Wed May 29th, 2019 at 04:13:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On the Planet (4.00 / 3)

I have a dumb question that no one seems capable of answering directly: Why is 5G a race?
Everyone -- the wireless industry, Democrats, Republicans, the major media, you name it -- frames the building of next-generation 5G networks as a "race" in which the United States needs to demonstrate "leadership."
Here is The Washington Post declaring America has the lead in the race to 5G. Here's CNN asking "Who's winning the race to 5G?" Here's AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson declaring that China isn't beating the US to 5G "yet," as some sort of ominous warning. Here's T-Mobile CEO John Legere telling the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology that merging with Sprint will let his company "win the race to 5G." Here is an entire microsite from industry lobbying group CTIA titled "The Race to 5G."
Let us never forget AT&T being so desperate to lead this "race" that it rolled out fake 5Ge logos on its phones.
But the stakes of this supposed race are wholly unclear. What happens if we win, besides telecom execs getting slightly richer?

by Bernard (bernard) on Wed May 29th, 2019 at 07:07:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The short answer is Americans are fucking stupid* and can only assimilate competitive sportsball imagery.

* 56% of Americans recently opined they don't want their rug rats learning Arabic numerals and 15% had no opinion.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Thu May 30th, 2019 at 01:45:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Short answer 2 (does not contradict short answer 1): a "race" is naked marketing framing to get 99% of fuckwits (your guess as to % of total population but quite possibly in the high 90s also) to shell out untold sums of money to get the first 5Geewhiz gadgets.

I used to be afew. I'm still not many.

by john_evans (john(dot)evans(dot)et(at)gmail(dot)com) on Thu May 30th, 2019 at 06:07:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Public to get rare look inside the Congressional Research Service, with attrition, morale points of contention

You spelled advertising campaign rong.

Marketing is the distribution of goods and services ("product") by a "producer" to another producer (B2B) or a "consumer" (B2C).

Advertising information ("advertisement") communicates Q (S), V (D), and site of a good or service to "market participants" (buyers and sellers), ie. those people willing and able to change one good or service into another of value. An advertisement is a public notice.

Synonymous terms (EN) for market exchange between buyers and sellers are trade, business, traffick (antiq.), or commerce. A synonym for an advertisement is a marketing communication. A "public relations" (PR) communication is not an advertisement; such a message is not fit for purpose nor intended to benefit a specific commercial objective.

The media utilized for distributing an advertisement reduce to audio and visual broadcast technology, operated by people, to display product. A specified period for advertising, determined by a seller or seller agent, is known (US-Eng.) as a "campaign". The period terminates at such time seller's funds are exhausted or sales goal is obtained.

The simplest form of marketing an advertisement is word-of-mouth (man is the communication tool). The most complex (to date) is "personalized" digital telecommunication addressed to one buyer's purchase preferences and habits, ie. information collected and transformed into data by one or more sellers.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu May 30th, 2019 at 12:43:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On PR (none / 0)

Here is an example of a PR message.

Facebook has another incentive to keep its head down. The deeper it gets into editorial decisions, the more it looks like a publisher, which could tempt legislators to limit the liability [sic] shield it currently enjoys under federal law. In addition, making judgments about truth and falsity [sic] could quickly become one of the world's biggest headaches.

What message is this reporter attempting to communicate? It is not an advertisement.

In fact, Facebook business is publishing. Facebook publishes original and derivative A/V properties supplied to this corporation's production apparatus by "registered users", both buyers and sellers, commercial an proprietary producers, non-profit and for-profit trade. All publishers exercise "editorial decisions" that determine production method and product of the enterprise which is reproducing speech of people. Purportedly, all publishers --natural and corporate persons-- enjoy protection from state prosecution of speech activities under the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu May 30th, 2019 at 01:20:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On PR (none / 0)

in re: censorship, penalties

CRS | Terrorism, Violent Extremism, and the Internet: Free Speech Considerations,* 6 May 2019

At the outset, it is not clear that a foreign national (i.e., a non-U.S. citizen or resident) could invoke the protections of the First Amendment in a specific U.S.prosecution or litigation involving online speech that the foreign national posted from abroad. The Supreme Court has never directly opined on this question. However, its decisions regarding the extraterritorial application of other constitutional protections to foreign nationals and lower court decisions involving speech made by foreign nationals while outside of the United States suggest that the First Amendment may not apply in that scenario. In contrast, free speech considerations are likely to be highly relevant in evaluating the legality of(1)proposals for the U.S. government to regulate what internet users in the United States can post,or (2)the enforcement of existing U.S. laws where the government seeks to hold U.S. persons liable for their online speech.

--
* CRS reports are exclusively commissioned by one or more members of the odious. The neither the specific question nor requesting member(s) is publicly identified with a report. Elements of CRS responses contain forward-looking statements, conjecture. See Disclaimer.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Sun Jun 2nd, 2019 at 03:07:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On PR (none / 0)

Since 1914, the Congressional Research Service, or CRS, has provided expert policy and legal analysis to staff, members and committees in the legislative branch.
[...]
The hearing will examine increasing attrition rates, low employee morale and a lack of diversity at the agency, among other issues, according to a committee spokesperson. Since 1914, the Congressional Research Service, or CRS, has provided expert policy and legal analysis to staff, members and committees in the legislative branch.

archived isolationism
"Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1789-2012", Congressional Research Service (CRS), Washington DC, United States (Sep 2012) 33 pp, single-spaced

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Sun Jun 23rd, 2019 at 01:31:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Here is an example of an advertisement:

Southwest three-day sale kicks off with $49 fares each way; here's what you need to know

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Tue Jun 4th, 2019 at 03:24:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

What is the percentage in India? Modi has already created a controversy by using Devenagari numerals on the currency.

by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Thu May 30th, 2019 at 07:19:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Tucker Carlson is trying to claim that the metric system is a conspiracy theory - Independent

Who cares about Arabic numerals? The real enemy is the metric system!

Tucker Carlson has claimed that America is facing a huge and pressing threat and it is... yes, you guessed it, the metric system.
Speaking on Tucker Carlson tonight, the right-wing presenter said:

"Almost every nation on Earth has fallen to tyranny: the metric system.
From Beijing to Buenos Aires, from Lusaka to London, the people of the world have been forced to measure their environment in millimetres and kilograms.
The United States is the only major country that is resisted, but we have no reason to be ashamed for using feet and pounds."

by Bernard (bernard) on Fri Jun 7th, 2019 at 06:48:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Wait until he finds out about geometrized units.

by asdf on Sat Jun 8th, 2019 at 04:09:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Given that he hasn't the brain wattage to handle lower elementary school math, I'm not expecting that any time soon.

by rifek on Tue Jul 2nd, 2019 at 05:16:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Living On NUMEROLOGY (none / 0)

Over 40% of newly elected Indian lawmakers facing charges
"The loophole that allows them to take office is that they have not been convicted -- in part because the Indian legal system has a huge backlog of an estimated 30 million cases and trials often last decades."

archived
CAMPAIGN 2019
Modi surges to victory in India on Hindu-first platform
double counting
the first Indian American U.S. senator and the second-ever African American female senator*
US ends waiver but India may continue to buy Iran oil
--
* Carol Moseley Braun, 1993-1999, Rise and Fall

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Mon Jun 17th, 2019 at 01:02:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]

○ Winnen of leren - Op jonge leeftijd (over)leven met PTSS
○ Presentation of her book in 2017

Amnesia and Gaza Genocide

"Trump's approval rating hits highest point (48%) in two years"

The Harvard-Harris poll suggests people care more about the economy than about inane tweets . . . https://t.co/oW5cAwiQEw pic.twitter.com/91pj2vW9zD
— Andy Grewal (@AndyGrewal) May 31, 2019

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Sat Jun 1st, 2019 at 12:07:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Search for A Better Life (none / 0)

R.I.P.

Unbelievably sad

by Oui on Wed Jun 5th, 2019 at 06:05:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Self-starvation (none / 0)

Noa Pothoven is believed to have refused to eat and there is no evidence of assisted death
A severely ill Dutch girl widely reported by international media as having been "legally euthanised" in a clinic in the Netherlands died at home, apparently after voluntarily refusing to eat or drink and with no evidence that her death was assisted.
Noa Pothoven, 17, who for several years had been treated in multiple institutions for severe depression and anorexia, and had made previous attempts to kill herself, died at her parents' home in Arnhem on 2 June, local media reported.
Media organisations from Australia to Britain and the US to India reported it as a case of "legal euthanasia" performed by a Dutch "end-of-life clinic", and Noa's name was trending on social media on Wednesday in countries including Italy, where the story was front-page news.

○ Media misreport Dutch teen Noa Pothoven's death as euthanasia | DW |

Amnesia and Gaza Genocide

by Oui on Thu Jun 6th, 2019 at 11:31:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Internet of Insecure Things (none / 1)

Samsung's security reminder makes the case for not owning a Samsung smart TV - The Verge

Samsung has reminded owners of its smart TVs that they should be regularly scanning for malware using its built-in virus scanning software. "Prevent malicious software attacks on your TV by scanning for viruses on your TV every few weeks," a (now deleted) tweet from the company's US support account read alongside a video attachment that demonstrated the laborious process.

Samsung's little PSA about scanning for "malware viruses" (eh hem) might be a sound security practice on a Samsung smart TV, but it's also an excellent reminder for why you might not want to buy one in the first place.

by Bernard (bernard) on Tue Jun 18th, 2019 at 06:55:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]