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.
Category Archives: Fiat/BTC interfaces
US Court Hits DDoS For Hire Operator With Mere 13 Months Of Incarceration
Sergiy Usatyuk of Orland Park, Illinois was hit with 13 months in prison by a North Carolina based US Circuit Court for operating the "Exostresser" DDoS for hire service in partnership with a unknown "Canadian" (archived). The 21 year old plead guilty to running the service between August 2015 and November 2017. In addition to the 13 months of incarceration, Usatyuk will enjoy 3 years of supervised release and an order to forfeit 542,925 USD.
Unrest Today: Yellow Jacket Rebellion Against Macron Now A Year Old, Bolivia Unrest Continues Developing Along Rural/Urban Split
The Yellow Jacket rebellion against the French despot Macron has now been going on for an entire calendar year. Macronist forces deployed chemical weapons and water cannons against French resistance fighters, as is their custom (archived).
The resignation and departure of Evo Morales appears to have resulted in an escalation of civil unrest in Bolivia. While the fall of Morales has some elements in common with common color revolutions, the speed with which he was ejected suggests actual discontent with Morales and his obnoxious spin on "third way" socialism fueled his fall. Morales further failed to cultivate active urban male supporters capable of keeping the military and police in check along the line of Maduro's collectivos in Venezuela. Morales indefensibly failed to failed to develop an entrenched network of supporters inside the capital and bet his entire regime on the loyalty of the countryside.
The current increase in Bolivian unrest appears to be driven by Cocaleros and other agrarian supporters of Evo Morales slowly making their way to La Paz. Prolonged conflict in Bolivia around these lines can be expected to influence cocaine prices, especially in Europe, in the short to mid term.
More Intel Data Leak Flaws Documented This Week Situation Particulary Grave
This week has seen a number of flaws in Intel chips that leak data, but two seem to dwarf others publicized so far (archived). The first, TPM-FAIL allows private keys stored with the "Intel Platform Trust Technology"(TM)(R) "trusted platform module" to be acquired via timing leakage. The ST33 by MTMicroelectronics was also shown to have a similar vulnerability.
The gravest reveal (archived) is a set of "Microarchitectural Data Sampling" attacks allowing any data passed through an Intel CPU to be leaked, in flight, whether the data has been stored in the CPU's cache or not. Many of these attacks abuse Intel's handling of speculative execution. Others take advantage of flaws introduced or made worse by efforts to patch Intel's previously documented speculative execution bugs.
Trend Micro Staff Sold Customer Information Outside Of Management Direction
Computer "security" firm Trend Micro has disclosed that a member of its staff has sold 68,000 customer records without approval from the firm's management (archived). Earlier this year a long running similar situation at US telecom AT&T came into the light. In that scheme AT&T staff sold access to AT&T systems in an organized manner and without management direction to do so. Trend Micro claims that in this case only the data of English speaking customers in English speaking countries was targeted.
US Meddling Provoked Defeat Of Mexican Military, Police By Commercial Enterprise
An operation in Mexico provoked by US meddling over concerns that fentanyl was being produced in the country lead to the defeat of Mexican police and military forces during a clusterfuck in which one of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's sons was briefly detained (archived, archived). Mexican President Obrador claims to not want to be forced into a drug war, a position likely informed by increasingly decisive and embarrasing defeats in the field suffered by Government forces repeatedly breaking informal ceasefires in aggression against superior Commercial forces.
NYSE Parent Begins Trading Bitcoin Futures Introducing New Volatility
NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange has begun trading Bitcoin futures from Bakkt yesterday (archived). Microsoft and Boston Consulting Group are also involved in the instrument. The contracts promise physical delivery of Bitcoins, but it remains to be seen how seriously anyone involved in this particular market is going to investigate the sincerity of the delivery claims. This new source of volatility has seen fiat/Bitcoin interfaces reporting substantial volatility with today's manifesting mostly in a downward direction.
This move opens up lessons in Bitcoin prices and inflexibility to a whole new class of trader.
After 18 Years Of "Never Forget" US Still At War
On this 18th anniversary of the day the "end of history" died, the US is still at war. The war is still a hot one (archived).
MIT Media Lab Haunted By Epstein
MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito is out after revelations that the late Pantsuitist Jeffery Epstein was intimately involved with the lab and the extent of the relationship has been actively concealed (archived). Shortly before Epstein's death the late Marvin Minsky of MIT was one of the names loudly declared in the press as a beneficiary of Epstein's networking.
Macri Begins Implementing Capital Controls As Foreign Currency Reserves Exhaust
Three weeks after the prospect of a Kirchner-Fernandez government gutted the value of the Argentine peso, current Argentine president Macri's increasingly Kirchner-esque response to the crisis has hit a new milestone (archived). The current regime has declared Argentinos may buy no more than 10,000 USD in a month and that businesses in Argentina submit their USD purchase plans to the government lest they are determined to be "hoarding" USD.
This comes after Argentina has spent 21 days actively fighting the market and exhausting its foreign currency reserves by trying to prop up the Peso Argentina's value near 60 to the USD when the market clearly understands that the Peso Argentino's value should be far lower. The remaining reserves nominally belonging to the Argentine Central Bank are encumbered as collateral for loans and almost certain to be forfeited in the coming default.
Meanwhile, publications in the Northern Argentina calling itself the US lead by Forbes had been running pieces written by Peronists explaining why Argentina can't be in as bad of a position as its behavior is forcing it into (archived). At last they had been until today when they had to admit currency controls are back.