Two key stealing libraries were found in the PyPi Python Package Index (archived). One mimicked the dateutil library by prepending a "python3-" so that suckers could stumble into python3-dateutil. The other, mimicked the jellyfish library but swapped a lowercase L for a capital i. Both were allegedly uploaded by the same user and exfiltrated data to the same destination. This is not the first time PyPi has had to remove malware mimicking popular packages, but they remain open to all comers and continue to exercise little actual control over the namespace they index.
Category Archives: Africa
Chicago Police Chief Fired
Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson was fired by Mayor Lori Lightfoot today (archived). Allegations of deception concerning an October episode where Johnson was found sleeping in his car are being presented as the reason for his firing. Johnson had already been scheduled to retire in several weeks. Anything less than a felony conviction will preserve the burden he presents to the insolvent pension system in Illinois.
Notably Johnson was the highest level official in the city of Chicago advocating for the prosecution of hate hoaxer Jussie Smollet. Instead, the 16 felony charges Jussie was indicted for by a Grand Jury were administratively dropped.
Inclusion Collision: Airstrip One Court Chooses Homosex Over Islam As Diversities Collide!
A "high court" judge in the United Queendom has decided to impose a permanent ban on protests outside a Birmingham primary school (archived). The Islamic protesters were unhappy with decisions by the school and Birmingham's local council which subjects their young children to "a gay ethos" in conflict with the religious beliefs they and 1.8 billion other persons around the world submit to.
In siding with the Government backed "gay ethos" and marginalizing the protester's active submission to Allah, the presiding judge used a relatively recent "common law" innovation promoted by Pantsuitists. The judge declared that the protesters "misunderstood" the content of the lessons they were protesting, and then he burdened them with a permanent ban on protests and 80% of the court costs incurred by the case.
Birmingham's Pantsuitist "director of education and skills" declared that the ruling offers protection from "escalating levels of anti-social behaviour". To this end the ruling lifted a previous ban on protesting the school through social media, likely with the aim of containing the feared "anti-social" action to readily discounted platforms, and the collision of groups celebrated for their diveristy and inclusion may be written of as a mere misunderstanding rather than the actual, live dispute that it is for a few minutes longer.
US FCC To Cut "Rural Internet" Funds As Half Assed Trade War Continues
The USG's FCC has decided to disallow new purchases of network gear made by Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE by recipients of "Universal Service Fund" subsidies though they have not yet made any firm decisions on whether recipients of these subsidies will be compelled to rip out any existing network gear (archived). The Universal Service fund was nominally established to encourage building telecom infrastructure in rural areas, but in practice it more frequently places ObamaPhones into the hands of the urban poor.
Efforts by the USG to engage in an actual trade war with China have been substantially hampered by US dependence on Chinese industry, particularly in propping up the illusion of the US having its own technology sector. So far the only major casualty on the Chinese side has been kidnapped Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.
Lizzy's Queendom Defies Mauritius And United Nations To Continue Illegal Occupation Of Chagos Islands
The United Queendom has let a UN deadline to surrender control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius pass after the UN International Court of Justice ruled Lizzy's continued occupation of the islands illegal. The UN General Assembly approved the dealine to vacate with a 116 to 6 vote (archived). Mauritius was compelled to trade the islands for their independence back in 1965, the 13th year Liz wore the crown.
Lizzie began renting out the largest island in the group, Diego Garcia, for USG use as an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean a mere 3 years later. Construction on the island to carrier conversion was delayed 4 years in order for depopulation efforts to rid the island of its previous inhabitants.
Warranty Concerns And Contract Cruft Keep US Military Machine Shops Idle As Repairs Forced Through Contractors
A legacy publication this week ran a letter to their editor allegedly composed by Captain Elle Ekman, a US Marine Corps logistics officer (archived). The letter's author relates some illustrative anecdotes showing the USG's preference for complicating logistics and letting expensively bought tooling rot in order to maximize their payments to contractors. The letter opens with:
A few years ago, I was standing in a South Korean field, knee deep in mud, incredulously asking one of my maintenance Marines to tell me again why he couldn’t fix a broken generator. We needed the generator to support training with the United States Army and South Korean military, and I was generally unaccustomed to hearing anyone in the Marine Corps give excuses for not effectively getting a job done. I was stunned when his frustrated reply was, "Because of the warranty, ma’am."
After a brief, forgetable foray into her local Pantsuit politics to pass the legacy editorial gatekeepers, she returns to reporting on the USG's entirely chosen sadness:
Besides the broken generator in South Korea, I remembered working at a maintenance unit in Okinawa, Japan, watching as engines were packed up and shipped back to contractors in the United States for repairs because "that’s what the contract says." The process took months.
With every engine sent back, Marines lost the opportunity to practice the skills they might need one day on the battlefield, where contractor support is inordinately expensive, unreliable or nonexistent.
I also recalled how Marines have the ability to manufacture parts using water-jets, lathes and milling machines (as well as newer 3-D printers), but that these tools often sit idle in maintenance bays alongside broken-down military equipment. Although parts from the manufacturer aren’t available to repair the equipment, we aren’t allowed to make the parts ourselves "due to specifications."
How pervasive is this issue for the most powerful[sic] military in the world? And what does it mean for a military that is expected to operate in the most austere and hostile environments to not possess the experience, training or tools to fix its own very technical equipment?
All signs point to these issues being incredibly pervasive, and it means that they can't be expected to operate per their own allies' observations in the field.
More Epstein Drama: Lizzie Benches Duke Of York, Guards Hit With Charges For Conspiracy To Slack
Old Lizzie has decided to suspend Price Andrew's public duties following the Duke of York's poor optics in reponding to questions about his friendship with the late Jeffery Epstein (archived). The Duke's public fumblings occurred after he agreed to an interview by British state Broadcaster BBC without first getting permission from Liz.
Meanwhile two guards at the prison where Jeffery Epstein's life ended have been charged with conspiracy and forging records for carrying out their jobs with all the intensity that can be expected out of government charges sitting in undemanding sinecures. Albeit these particular sinecures happen to exist in an environment labeled "high security" per USG in universe conventions (archived).
As US "Higher Education" Bubble Bursts Doomed Schools Push To Hide Insolvency
With the US higher education bubble bursting, a group of small colleges have managed to bully a firm to abandon the release of a report damning their dismal situations (archived). The report was going to project how many years of operation are left across 946 private US colleges in order to assist parents and prospective students weight the risk of school closure in their higher education decisions.
The firm which calls itself "Edmit" offers an "online advising" tool, and they folded on their planned release of the data after allegedly receiving a note from a lawyer swearing anything suggesting the school he represents faces the prospect of near term closure is false. Never mind the increasingly poor alumni networks alienated by the insanity their alma maters sell combine to make any particular school's chance of pulling of a heroic fundraising effort very unlikely.
Denial will continue until closures actually happen.
Intel Continues Burning Former Selling Points As It Sets To Pull Old Firmware Downloads Offline
Intel has decided to burn its former "we support our products forever" marketing point by announcing they will pull firmware update downloads for "end of life" products from their website (archived). Their "being fast" selling point started to collapse back in January 2018. The reason why they lost their being fast selling point keeps them from presenting themselves as a "safe" choice. All they have left is their large existing install base of defective products.
UK Police Punish 237 Of Their Own For Internal Breaching
After British Police Sergeant Okechukwu Efobi plead guilty for "abusing" police databases to research cases against himself earlier this year, it turns out 237 cops and staffers at police agencies on Airstrip One were disciplined for a variety of infractions broadly classed as "misusing IT resources" (archived). Freedom of Information requests have been met with responses suggesting there is little access control or monitoring of internal police networks and databases within the Queendom (archived).