Qubes a "securtity focused" desktop operating system has been hit with a privilege escalation vulnerability inherited from the Xen hypervisor which holds the whole thing together. The entire security model of Qubes depends on using the Xen hypervisor to isolate all the things, but privilege escalation vulnerabilities happen to hypervisors. An update has been released to address this particular bug, but for actual security skip virtualizing and try physicalizing. Check those privileges.
Monthly Archives: July 2016
Florida Catches Zika
Following this summer's failure to begin a serious program of mosquito eradication, emerging news is suggesting that flying syringes in Florida have begun passing the Zika virus among humans. Now that mosquitoes have begun using women in the United States as a weapon, the government of Florida has announced it will begin serious mosquito control measures. Britain responded with a guidance1 on sex among its subjects who have traveled to Florida this summer. This British sex ban features substantial gender inequality affecting males for six months following their return from Florida where unspecified other genders face only 6-8 weeks. Sorry for your loss.
Really a ban ↩
Bleeding Coinbase Raises Fees
Coinbase continues to exhibit signs of bleeding funds, having announced on their website that fees will increase to 3.99% for credit and debit card purchases in most countries where their service is offered beginning August 5th. (archived) It is not known if the decision to change their fee structure is due to losing money from their recent etherape. Sorry fork, your loss.
Aspiring Bitcoin Trapstar Robbed At Knife Point
Earlier this week, a Florida man was robbed of $28,000 dollars cash during a Bitcoin deal gone wrong. Steve Manos (WOT:nonperson), met two men at midnight in the parking lot of a Boston Market "restaurant". Manos gave one of the men $28,000 cash in a brown paper bag, after which time a knife was pulled. The two men then ran from the scene. One suspect, Andre Allen (WOT:nonperson) was arrested because phone number. Manos gave Allen's to authorities. Beware the dangers of Bitcoin trapping with individuals outside the WOT. Sorry for your loss.
RBG Black Rebel Sanctioned Further As Police Apparently Fear Mysterious Organization
Alleged Rebel But Gangster Black Rebels member Justin Payne faces further sanctions after police allege a tweet was sent from one of his old alleged twitter accounts. The tweets reportedly alleged that police and the FBI set Payne up, expressed remorse that alleged Dallas police shooter Micah Johnson was killed in a drone strike, and further suggested that Micah Johnson was a Rebel But Gangster Black Rebel. Payne was hit with six months of house arrest and intensified monitoring of his computer and cellular phone use. Payne waived his opportunity to challenge this restrictions in a hearing though Payne has not admitted authorship of the tweets.
This development raises serious questions about the Rebel But Gangster Black Rebels including:
- Why does this organization alleged to have a national presence only appear in a local newspaper.
- Where does this organization fall on the "law enforcement" threat radar? Somewhere around ISIS or somewhere around Trendon Shavers?
- Is the whole Rebel But Gangster Black Rebels just one of those entrapment things law enforcement sets up to create terrorists, except this one outgrew their sandbox?
Peace in our time.
Brian Armstrong Still Has Hard On For Harkforks
Hoping to climb to the top of the "fork all the things" subculture, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (WOT:nonperson) is now intent on a push to hardfork reddit's r/bitcoin, calling on reddit CEO Steve Huffman to remove /u/theymos as moderator and turn control of the subreddit over to persons more aligned with Coinbase's business interests. Huffman attempted a neutral take stating: “We’ve seen that with the Bitcoin community, I don't disagree with you at all. Right now, our opinion is that we try to stay hands-off unless they’re breaking other, site-wide rules." Speculation still abounds that Roger Ver is helping to finance the lulz, going so far as to offer a bounty in order to have theymos removed. Ver is widely known for quoting himself and paying mercenaries to spam links to his forum across various social media sites. Armstrong publicly weeks prior that he was unsubscribing from r/Bitcoin and instead getting his news from r/btc instead, though as other reddit users point out, listening to redditards can have real-life disatrous consequences. Reddit has a history of censorship aimed at promoting other Y-Combinator associated ventures. Peace in our time.
Ether Huffing Gossip Continues, Exchanges Risk Insolvency
Ethereum vs. Ethereum Classic continues to be top on the gossip list on this week's shitcoin roundup. Beleaguered fiat-to-cryptocoin exchanges Coinbase/GDAX and btc-e have both declared the "Classic" fork a scam,1 and have declared they will not release user funds on that particular side of the fork. Classic continued to have more volume overall in the past 24 hours, moving $ 38,714,800 compared to Ethereum's $ 19,722,200. Ethereum project collaborators such as MIT and now Cornell are frantically hoping to use their new magic mutable blockchain powers to convince users that this is really how crypto works, with Cornell sponsoring a "Ethereum Blockchain Bootcamp" with Pope Vitalik Butterin himself in attendance. (archived).
The actual scam is that in spite of being enlightened as to how hard forks work, the leaked numerous tokens on the chain that was initially in the minority and now they have a hole in their books that can only be filled by playing fiat with declarations the coins never existed when in fact they lost them. ↩
LastPass Sucks, Always Sucked
Tavis Ormandy (WOT:nonperson) uncovered a serious security vulnerability in LastPass. Before disclosing the vulnerability to LastPass developers, Ormandy tweeted:
Are people really using this lastpass thing? I took a quick look and can see a bunch of obvious critical problems. I'll send a report asap.
Due to the number of suckers entrusting LastPass for every login, Ormandy received numerous panicked responses due to a postmortem published yesterday on a serious vulnerability that lets websites take passwords held by Lastpass at will. Peace in our time.
Monsanto Led Dicamba Enthusiasm Raises Tensions Among Farmers
The debut of Monsanto's "Roundup Ready Xtend Crop System(TM)(R)" is raising tensions among soybean and cotton farmers who have and have not adopted the seed component of the system, especially in the American Mid South (archived). This year's combination of weather and desperate tillage has lead to ideal conditions for Palmer's Amaranth to flourish in soybean fields threatening to greatly reduce yields by shading soybean plants and consuming soil nitrogen1 far more aggressively than the soybeans can.
Glyphosate resistant Palmer's Amaranth after its debut in 2006 has swiftly spread across the country and this year's proliferation of the weed has forced farmers who planted "Roundup Ready Xtend Crop System(TM)(R)" cotton and soybeans to spray their fields with Dicamba. The twist is that Monsanto isn't done bringing the herbicide portion of "Roundup Ready Xtend" to market so farmers who planted seeds from this Monsanto crop system are just spraying and dumping Dicamba on their fields out of desperation. Farmers who lack these seeds are watching their soybeans curl up and suffer, because Dicamba is especially effective on legumes.
The fallout from this year's soybean season will likely include the consumption of immense amounts of various EPA and Department of Agriculture functionaries time, substantial monetary penalties and torts against the farmers who manage to harvest soybeans this year, and pain for Monsanto as restrictions on applying Dicamba increase and diminish the point of marketing Dicamba resistant soybeans. Sorry for your loss.
Most plants take soil nitrogen and pump it into growing above the soil. Palmer's Amaranth isn't content with that. It takes soil nitrogen for growth and then takes still more soil nitrogen and stores it as nitrates. At one point Palmer's Amaranth was grown as a staple grain, but in the contemporary farm environment the level of nitrates accumulated turn the plant toxic. ↩
Royal Dutch Shell Shocked! Losses!
Declining oil prices significantly impacted the profits of Royal Dutch Shell, which reported the lowest earnings in over a decade. Reported profits sank 72 percent, for a total reported profit of $1.05 billion. Company leadership cites low oil prices, which traded around $44 per barrel last week which is up from $35.21 earlier this year, and $63.50 a year ago. The oil industry has shown no signs of recovery. Sorry for your loss.