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Comment From the manifesto (Score 5, Insightful) 126

"216. Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else's academic freedom. (This is "political correctness.") The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control."

His methods may have been immoral but his diagnosis had some merit.

Comment Who cares about mass extinction (Score -1, Flamebait) 218

It's not a big deal.

I mean maybe we could so something to slow it down or at least contribute to a path to the reduction of greenhouse gases but if it means buying a Tesla, enriching Elon Musk and ending up letting more people post what they want on twitter is it really worth it?

The extinction of a few hundred species is a small price to pay to slightly silence people I disagree with.

Comment Re:Reasonable expectations (Score 2) 170

Requiring companies to include it is not a 'slippery slope' - its already down the hill and off the cliff. PCs came with floppy drives forever then one day, they stopped. PCs came with CD/DVD drives forever. Then one day it stopped. Should the judge require that laptops ship with external floppy drives and CD/DVD drives now? If the box or ad claimed that it came with a charger, then its fraud and potentially within the realm of the state to respond. Other than that, this is an opinion with a gun.

Comment Re:What do you expect from Apple? (Score -1, Troll) 204

I don't agree with Apple's policies. I don't support pointing guns at them to get them to change their behavior so I don't support forcing companies to act in a manner that the mob decides that they want. Have you already purchased a laptop from a company like Frame.Work? If so - great! If not, stop being so lazy and asking some third party to use threats of violence to achieve a goal that you are unwilling to approach by simply changing your purchasing behavior.

Comment Re:Standard operation in Europe (Score 1) 104

Encrypted radio communication for law enforcement and similar has been standard in Europe for at least a decade by now, so this is just a minor piece of news.

When there are scanners that can get around the encryption then we can come back. And they will come.

While we like to think hackers can solve every problem - it can't. This is not DVD or blu-ray. Regardless of how any given system works at the moment, with a limited number of devices that regularly return to the base station for rekeying can create a system that is impossible to have cracked without a daily insider threat. You better hope this is true or all of your bank accounts and all cryptocurrency is also broken

Comment Extends existing law - which was already copied (Score 1) 112

NH already took a step toward this in 2011/2012 when we passed HB418 (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gencourtmobile.com%2F2012%2FHB418%2FText). That bill was then copied by Oklahoma bill HB 2197 and perhaps others. This new legislation certainly goes beyond that. And with respect to other comments, yes, NH does not require motorcycle helmets, or seatbelts, or car insurance, or income tax or sales tax. And we don't require a permit to carry a firearm either open or concealed. And there are no knife laws. yeah - scary - stay away.

Comment Re:What vaccines can do (Score 1) 328

Smallpox is a DNA virus which mutates slower than the error prone RNA based viruses. We keep pointing to that one case as if it implies we could do the same with any other virus we want... Maybe .. maybe not. Pointing to a single example of anything and believing it means with high certainty that the example can be replicated is sort of why people end up losing all of their money when gambling. Efficacy matters as does the R0 value and probably durability of immunity as well as mutation rate of the virus.

Comment How to get publicity (Score 3, Informative) 126

Me: Hey boss, I want to do a demonstration and then a press release about cyber vulnerabilities in cars. My plan is to use this Hyundai and show how I can change the radio from AM to FM.

Boss: boring. nobody will read that. Can we make it a Tesla?

Me: Well sure, but then we'd be demonstrating something that is not really relevant anymore and we'd have to find a car that was prevented from getting any updates which they generally do automatically...

Boss: No problem, I know a guy at a junk yard who recovers scrapped Teslas and fixes them and prevents getting updates.. Still, I don't think this is really going to be eye catching enough. I mean there are lots of stories about cars being hacked.. Can we spice it up some more?

Me: Well, I suppose we could say something about a drone

Boss: Is a drone required for this?

Me: No, but it will sound cool.

Boss: Great. Still needs something else.

Me: We could call this old irrelevant attack "T-Bone" to bring forth imagery of a horrible car crash.

Boss: Can this attack be used to create a T-Bone accident?

Me: I guess not really..but maybe.

Boss: It's a go!

----

I am not saying that this is not interesting - doing a test like this to 'demonstrate' something that is well known and patched is a semi-publicity stunt....it does work..so there is that.

Submission + - SPAM: Your WhatsApp Account Can Be Suspended By Anyone Who Has Your Phone Number

An anonymous reader writes: If you're a frequent user of WhatsApp, you may want to keep an eye on a disturbing hole discovered in its security this weekend. It's possible for an attacker to completely suspend your WhatsApp account, without any recourse for the individual user, and all they need is your phone number. At the time of writing there's no solution for this issue.

This newly-discovered flaw uses two separate vectors. The attacker installs WhatsApp on a new device and enters your number to activate the chat service. They can't verify it, because of course, the two-factor authentication system is sending the login prompts to your phone instead. After multiple repeated and failed attempts, your login is locked for 12 hours. Here's where the tricky part comes in: with your account locked, the attacker sends a support message to WhatsApp from their email address, claiming that their (your) phone has been lost or stolen, and that the account associated with your number needs to be deactivated. WhatsApp "verifies" this with a reply email, and suspends your account without any input on your end. The attacker can repeat the process several times in succession to create a semi-permanent lock on your account. The results are disturbing, but at the very least, this method can't be used to actually gain access to an account, merely to block access by its legitimate owner. Confidential text messages and contacts are not exposed.

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