Riviera Beach, a suburb of Palm Beach, has paid a 600,000 USD ransom to recover the city's records (archived). The municipal government lost control of their computer system three weeks ago and approved 1 million USD in spending on new computing equipment last week before giving into the ransom.
Monthly Archives: June 2019
Iran Shoots Down 100+ Million USD Spy Drone
A US Global Hawk drone flying with its identification systems turned off was shot down by Iran leaving a very expensive debris field in the Strait of Hormuz (archived). A high endurance, high altitude surveillance drone intended to replace the cold war era U-2's mission, each Global Hawk drone carried a 131.4 million USD manufactering cost which balloons to 222.7 million USD when program research and development costs are accounted for. With tensions between Iran and the USG rising, democratically elected US President Donald Trump tweeted in response to the incident that:
"Iran made a very big mistake!"
In light of defections trending in Iran's favor and the USG butthurt over losing a drone with identifying equipment off, an especially grave violation of international aviation norms in light of the 9/11 airplanes as rockets incident; who is really making the mistakes?
Harley-Davidson Partners With China’s Qianjiang Motorcycle Amid Shrinking US Market
Harley-Davidson announced they are working with China’s Qianjiang Motorcycle in order to build smaller displacement bikes (archived). Harley has seen a substantial decline in sales as the US market continues getting poorer and older (archived). At the same time their product line centered around the peculiarities of American recreational riding is failing to gain traction in the international market which favors useful bikes capable of agile urban navigation. The first announced product from this partnership will still have a displacement of 338 cc, well above the 125 to 250 cc range favored by most riders worldwide.
21 Month Sentence To New Zealand Businessman For Video Sharing In New Zealand, No Copyrights Charges Involved
Philip Arps, the 44 year old owner of a local construction business, has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for sharing the video of a New Zealand Eco-terrorist attack conducted by Brenton Tarrant (archived). The prosecution pushed for prison over home detention over alleged "extreme views" held by Arps in a blantant act of punishment for the man's sincerely held beliefs.
Twelve other people have been arrested and await processing for having shared the same video online.
UK "Human Rights" Activist Owns Israeli Spyware Firm
Yana Peel, who runs art galleries and makes noise about advancing human rights, is also a part owner of Israeli spyware company selling surveillance products to fiat governments (archived). She counts many time failed US presidential candidate and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg as a close friend, mentor, and chair of her Serpentine art gallery.
Cloudflare Shitgnomes Hyping "Randomness Beacons"
Notorious USG surveillance firm Cloudflare is hyping a network of "randomness beacons" and encouraging folks to use the output of these beacons in places where numbers generated under the watch of others do not belong (archived). The pernicious shitgnomes caution against using the public output of their beacons for private keys in order to imply their "private" entropy offerings are suitable for private keys. They are not. The proposition that a known NSA and CIA surveillance partner offers any private thing is incredible in its insanity.
Hygienic random numbers suitable for battlefield use come from auditable processes and instruments in the hands of the user whose life depends on them.
Argentine Fuckup Leads To Power Outages In Argentina, Uruguay, And Parts Of Other South American Countries
Argentina's EDESA fucked up their transmission interlink bringing power from Paraguay's Yacyretá dam leading to a casacade of failures that caused nationwide outages in Argentina and Uruguay with partial outages in most neighboring countries (archived, archived). The outage began 7:02 local time (UTC -3) and Uruguay's national electric utility UTE had restored power to most of the country within a few hours. Service restoration in Argentina has been slower, except in Tierra del Fuego which avoided the outage with its own generation facilities and separation from the rest of Argentina's electric grid.
Paraguay, where the Yacyretá dam is located, is a massive exporter of hydroelectric generated power to the region with most of its output being bought by Brazil. Uruguay exports electricity to Argentina. Argentina is a major net importer of electricity, buying substantial amounts of power from its neighbors.
Yubikey FIPS Products Suffer Reduced Randomness
Yubico has published an advisory warning that their Yubikey FIPS products offer reduced randomness under a wide variety of conditions. While Yubikey is offering a replacement program, this does nothing to alleviate the damage rendered to those who fired their devices in anger. No Such lAbs has produced a dedicated, auditable random number generator which has strangely seen no competition in the market.
Two Tankers Allegedly Torpedoed In Gulf Of Oman
Today brings news that two oil tankers with connection to Japan were allegedly attacked by torpedoes while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is visiting his counterparts in Iran (archived). Iranian naval vessels were the first to respond to distress calls and rescued the two ships' 44 crew members.
US National Security Advisor John Bolton has been attempting to incite an armed conflict between Iran and USG aligned forces in the region since his Venezuela coup spectacularly failed. The USG has previously leveraged the accidental loss of the USS Maine to incite a war against Spain as well as a shootout between the destroyer USS Maddox and radar ghosts inside North Vietnamese territorial waters to escalate hostilities against Vietnam.
Earlier this week Houthi "rebels" in Yemen attacked an airport inside Saudi Arabia with a cruise missile (archived). The Houthi "rebels" control a substantial portion of Yemen including the capital of Sana'a, which they have held in spite of a hostile Saudi government run war attempting to exterminate them.
British Home Secretary Sajid Javid Signs Order To Extradite Julian Assange To United States
British Home Secretary Sajid Javid has signed an order requesting Julian Assange's extradition to the United States for Julian's attempts to do journalism in violation of the US Espionage Act (archived). The extradition order will be weighed in the UK's courts Friday. Sweden withdrew their competing extradition claim earlier this month.