Turkey, the NATO alliance's second major military power, plans to start independent operations in Syria due to the USG's ongoing entanglements with Kurdish militias preventing an effective collaboration (archived). In recent years Turkey has pivoted from being a US safe haven for aiming threats at Russia to a less concretely alligned power, finding itself ejected from the F-35 boondogle because Russian S-400 batteries present a better value. The USG's hard on for promoting instability in Syria at the apparent request of a small, unreliable ally seems to have inflicted greater loss to NATO than any actual accumulation of casualties in combat.
Dutch "Bulletproof" Host Down, EuroCops Plea "Mirai Botnet"
Airstrip One Begins Judicial Bitcoin And "Crypto" Auctions
The asset recovery section of Airstrip One's "Eastern Region Special Operations Unit" claims to have recently auctioned a mixture of Bitcoin and lesser altcoins through a shop calling itself "Wilsons Auctions" (archived). They reported collecting 240,000 units of a currency they call the "Pound Sterling" despite the history of the land, once called England, largely consisting of exercises in debasing the "Pound Sterling" from the literal pound weight of silver the name implies. At present, the "Pound Sterling" has a value approximating the original silver penny in purchasing power.
Trend: "Platforms" Losing Free Labor Amid Political Pronoun Wars
Tech "Platform" Stack Exchange has lost a number of volunteer moderators over the TrannyCoC pronoun wars (archived). Expect the cultural revolution to continue driving up the empire's costs.
Qntra (S.QNTR) September 2019 Report
German Cops Raid Cyberbunker Over Claims of Collaboration With Child Pornographers, etc
German police invaded a surplus Cold War bunker which had been converted to datacenter use over allegations that the operators were collaborating with child pornographers, darknet drug dealers, etc (archived). The German collaboration allegations are at the core of the case, because under German law without active collaboration the service providers are sheltered from liability connected to whatever their customers may or may not be doing. This datacenter operation had been harassed by pseudo-statal organizations including the MPAA and Spamhaus from its inception through its capture. The local police commanders managed to assemble 600 armed conscripts to capture their target.
USG Week In Review: Trump, Ukraine, Biden, Phone, Impeachment, Trap
This past week has seen a small yet very noisy burst of instability inside the USG. Rumours of a "credible" CIA whistleblower report concerning a possible "quid pro quo" during a telephone conversation between democratically elected US President Donald Trump and Ukraine's new leader being supressed. This lead to acting lead Pantsuit Nancy surrendering to demands from more radical sectors of her party to open an impeachment investigation.
After this capitulation a transcript of the phone call was released followed shortly by the whistlblower's report where the CIA agent in question revealed his concerns were all raised by second and third hand recollections. In the time leading up to these released demands to expedite the impeachment proceedings reached a fever pitch before digestion of the actual content of the transcript and complaint revealed this line of prosectuion against Trump is even weaker than the entirely fictional cases Pantsuitists had been spinning since November 2016.
As result the deep concerns expressed by Trump to his Ukranian counterpart concerning former Pantsuitist Vice President Joe Biden's son's business in Ukraine1 has entered the record. Because Nancy surrendered to allow the impeachment investigation to begin over this matter, Nancy has exposed the remains of the crippled DNC to investigations into their actions while Trump remains merely exposed to debate over the meanings of particular utterances.
As is typical of US attempts to leverage office, the sums involved are far smaller for the involved persons on the national stage in the US compared to local politicians in China for reasons of US poverty. ↩
Former Danzhou Mayor Relieved Of 13.5 Tons Of Gold and 268 Billion Yuan After Anti-Corruption Investigation
Ongoing anti-corruption investigations in China have apparently lead to the arrest of former Danzou mayor and former Communist Party secretary Zhang Qi (archived, archived). Investigators reportedly found 13.5 tons of gold and a cash stash summing to 268 billion yuan in a concealed basement at the communist's home. At presently advertised exchange rates, these holdings put the recently seized fortune above 38 billion USD and would place Zhang Qi at 19th place on the Forbes rich list above Alibaba's Jack Ma and Tencent's Ma Huateng.
2011 To 2017 iDevices Jailbroken Via "Apple Bootrom" Exploit
Someone calling themself Axi0mX has unveiled an exploit overcoming "Apple Bootrom" and allowing Apple's iDevices using Apple's A5 through A11 chips to be "jailbroken" or otherwise be put in service of a new master (archived). This exploit reportedly requires physical access to a target device, and patching against the exploit supposedly would require new hardware.
SystemD's Poettering Wants To Break Linux User Management To Suspend His Laptop
SystemD wrecking artist Lennart Poettering has proposed a substantial reworking of the way Linux handles users which would break many of the ways Linux is actually used under the pretext that the changes would make him feel more comfortable leaving his laptop in a suspended power state (archived).
Most notably Lennart's new user and authentication model would require users to already be logged into a system locally in order to access a shell over ssh. Under the new Lennart login model, if the user isn't locally logged in the authorized_keys file for the user will be encrypted and inaccessible to the system preventing ssh authentication. Typical of Poettering efforts this latest proposal breaks numerous things that work to implement hypothetical mitigations of purely constructed dilemmas, like Poettering's supposed aversion to turning his laptop off.