Merry Christmas, Solstice, Krampus _____ (Fill in the Blank)
December 23rd, 2015I’m probably going to sign off for a couple of days. Whatever you believe or don’t believe during this maddening-for-some time of year, enjoy a brief pause in the firehose of doom that normally spews out of Cryptogon.
We got our eight year old son a break barrel pellet rifle. He’s been doing the Ralphy-routine from Christmas Story for months; dropping not-so-subtle hints about the fact that he wants an air rifle, leaving the sporting goods catalog on the table opened to the airgun section, etc. (No he hasn’t seen Christmas Story.)
I’ve actually been coming back at him with the immortal, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid,” which cracks me up to no end because I was an absolute air gun nut at his age. I only had crappy Daisy and Crosman airguns, which I thought were awesome back then. It turns out that the toy grade stuff costs almost as much as higher end airguns here in NZ, so I just cut to the chase and bought him a Webley VMX D-RAM which came with a 4x scope. haha. That thing would have seemed like off-world technology back in my Powermaster 66 days.
Anyway, see ya in a bit.
Amnesty: Russian Attacks on Civilians in Syria, “May Amount to War Crimes”
December 23rd, 2015In other news, US-Backed Kurdish Forces Committing War Crimes Against Syrian Civilians.
Via: Amnesty International:
Russian air strikes in Syria have killed hundreds of civilians and caused massive destruction in residential areas, striking homes, a mosque and a busy market, as well as medical facilities, in a pattern of attacks that show evidence of violations of international humanitarian law, said Amnesty International in a new briefing published today.
Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog
December 23rd, 2015Some of you might find this interesting:
Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog
HTTP 451
December 23rd, 2015New HTTP status code. Nope, this isn’t a joke.
It was approved by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) on 18 December 2015.
Via: Wikipedia:
In computer networking, HTTP 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons is an error status code of the HTTP protocol to be displayed when the user requests an illegal resource, such as a web page censored by a government, with the number 451 being a reference to the 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, where books are outlawed. 451 could be described as a more descriptive variant of 403 Forbidden.
Examples of situations where an HTTP 451 error code could be displayed include web pages deemed a danger to national security, or web pages deemed to violate copyright, privacy, blasphemy laws, or any other law or court order.
However, some sites may be forced to produce HTTP 404 (File Not Found) or similar, if they are not legally permitted to disclose that the resource has been removed. Such a tactic is used in the United Kingdom (see also: Gag order, superinjunction) by some ISPs utilising the Internet Watch Foundation blacklist, returning a 404 message or another error message instead of showing a message indicating the site is blocked.
China: Sesame Credit
December 23rd, 2015Via: Extra Credits:
China has gamified being an obedient citizen with the creation of Sesame Credit. The game links to your social network and gives you a score for doing things that the government approves of, but it also reduces that score for doing things the government disapproves of. Even your friends’ scores affect your own, and being friends with people who have a low score will drag your score down as well. This insidious system applies social pressure on people to ostracize their friends with lower scores, either forcing those friends to change their ways or effectively quarantining their rebellious ideas. While many sci-fi visions of a dystopian future have centered around a bleak government that controls through fear, Sesame Credit shows us that a government can use gamification and positive reinforcement to be just as controlling. And it’s real. While currently the system is opt-in, the government plans to make it mandatory in 2020. Once mandatory, it may give rewards for good scores or penalties for bad ones. And in the meantime, making it opt-in has already set the tone for the game: people participate willingly, so they find it fun, and they set a very high standard for what the “average” score should be. Already people have begun sharing their scores on social media.
Related:
China ‘Social Credit’: Beijing Sets Up Huge System
Google Pairs With Ford To Build Self-Driving Cars
December 22nd, 2015Via: Yahoo Autos:
Google and Ford will create a joint venture to build self-driving vehicles with Google’s technology, a huge step by both companies toward a new business of automated ride sharing, Yahoo Autos has learned.
According to three sources familiar with the plans, the partnership is set to be announced by Ford at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. By pairing with Google, Ford gets a massive boost in self-driving software development; while the automaker has been experimenting with its own systems for years, it only revealed plans this month to begin testing on public streets in California. Google has 53 test vehicles on the road in California and Texas, with 1.3 million miles logged in autonomous driving.
SpaceX Has Successfully Launched and Landed a Falcon 9 Rocket
December 22nd, 2015Via: Reuters:
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on Monday with a payload of communications satellites before the reusable main-stage booster turned around, soared back to Cape Canaveral and landed safely near its launch pad in a dramatic spaceflight first.
The successful mission, capped by delivery of all 11 satellites to orbit for launch customer ORBCOMM, unfolded in just over 30 minutes and marked a pivotal reversal of fortunes for privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, founded by high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
It was the first flight for his California-based company since a rocket failure in June that destroyed a cargo ship being carried on a resupply mission bound for the International Space Station.
The upgraded, 23-story-tall Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 8:29 p.m. EST/0129 GMT, with the nine-engine suborbital main stage returning 10 minutes later to a landing site about 6 miles south of its launch pad. The upper-stage booster continued its ascent to Earth orbit with its payload.
Video: SpaceX: ORBCOMM-2 Full Launch Webcast
Related: Reusable Rockets: The Shape of Things to Come
VW to Introduce All-Electric, Long-Range Microbus in 2017
December 22nd, 2015310 mile range! That’s going to be a huge and expensive battery.
Awesome, though.
Via: Adventure Journal:
Can Volkswagen rebuild the trust that was lost over its emissions-cheating scandal? Time will tell. Maybe in the short term, distraction is good enough, and the new model that VW is set to reveal at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month will be one heck of a distraction: It’s going to be an all-electric microbus van, with a range of up to 310 miles, Autocar reports.
The van, called Camper, will be announced during the January 5 keynote address by Herbert Diess, head of passenger cars for Volkswagen.
…
The van will be front wheel drive, with a small motor up front and battery packs under the floor. Sorry, folks, it’s not a replacement for the Syncro. But with a battery system based on the 2016 Audi R8 e-tron sports car and e-tron Quattro Concept SUV, its range of 250 to 300 miles would top everything currently available in the States except for Teslas.
VW plans to build the Camper in Mexico beginning in 2017, and there will be a four-cylinder gasoline version and a diesel version, too. At least, we can hope. In 2001, Volkswagen announced a new microbus would be available in 2003. It missed that target date and two years later the company pulled the plug on the program.
Probable Government Backdoors Found on Juniper Firewalls
December 19th, 2015Via: Wired:
On Thursday, tech giant Juniper Networks revealed in a startling announcement that it had found “unauthorized” code embedded in an operating system running on some of its firewalls.
The code, which appears to have been in multiple versions of the company’s ScreenOS software going back to at least August 2012, would have allowed attackers to take complete control of Juniper NetScreen firewalls running the affected software. It also would allow attackers, if they had ample resources and skills, to separately decrypt encrypted traffic running through the Virtual Private Network, or VPN, on the firewalls.
“During a recent internal code review, Juniper discovered unauthorized code in ScreenOS that could allow a knowledgeable attacker to gain administrative access to NetScreen devices and to decrypt VPN connections,” Bob Worrall, the companies’ CIO wrote in a post. “Once we identified these vulnerabilities, we launched an investigation into the matter, and worked to develop and issue patched releases for the latest versions of ScreenOS.”
…
The security community is particularly alarmed because at least one of the backdoors appears to be the work of a sophisticated nation-state attacker.
“The weakness in the VPN itself that enables passive decryption is only of benefit to a national surveillance agency like the British, the US, the Chinese, or the Israelis,” says Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute and UC Berkeley. “You need to have wiretaps on the internet for that to be a valuable change to make [in the software].”
Wal-Mart Hires Lockheed Martin for “Intelligence Gathering” on Union Organizers
December 19th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
OUR Walmart, a group of employees backed and funded by a union, was asking for more full-time jobs with higher wages and predictable schedules. Officially they called themselves the Organization United for Respect at Walmart. Walmart publicly dismissed OUR Walmart as the insignificant creation of the United Food and Commercial Workers International (UFCW) union. “This is just another union publicity stunt, and the numbers they are talking about are grossly exaggerated,” David Tovar, a spokesman, said on CBS Evening News that November.
Internally, however, Walmart considered the group enough of a threat that it hired an intelligence-gathering service from Lockheed Martin, contacted the FBI, staffed up its labor hotline, ranked stores by labor activity, and kept eyes on employees (and activists) prominent in the group. During that time, about 100 workers were actively involved in recruiting for OUR Walmart, but employees (or associates, as they’re called at Walmart) across the company were watched; the briefest conversations were reported to the “home office,” as Walmart calls its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.
