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Hackers Disable Door Locks at Four-Star Hotel, Demand/Get Bitcoin Ransom
by Razer 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

> "We are planning at the next room refurbishment for old-fashioned door > locks with real keys," he said. "Just like 111 years ago at the time > of our great-grandfathers." > Hackers Disable Door Locks at Four-Star Hotel, Demand Ransom The hackers demanded 2 Bitcoins in payment to return control of the systems back to the hotel -- and the hotel says it had no choice but to pay. By Jeff Goldman | February 02, 2017 Hackers recently breached the internal systems at Austria's four-star, 111-year-old Romantik Seehotel Jagerwirt, according to Bleeping Computer. The hackers disabled both the hotel's electronic door locks and the reservation system, meaning that new keys couldn't be generated and reservations couldn't be checked or confirmed. They demanded 2 Bitcoins (almost $2,000) to return control of the systems back to the hotel -- and the hotel says it had no option but to pay the ransom. "The house was totally booked with 180 guests, we had no other choice," hotel managing director Christoph Brandstaetter told The Local. "Neither police nor insurance help you in this case." This was the third recent cyber attack for the hotel, Brandstaetter said. A fourth attempt soon after was only blocked because computers had been replaced and new security standards implemented. "The restoration of our system after the first attack in summer has cost us several thousand Euros," Brandstaetter said. "We did not get any money from the insurance so far because none of those to blame could be found." In response to the hack, Brandstaetter said the hotel has one unique security solution in the works. "We are planning at the next room refurbishment for old-fashioned door locks with real keys," he said. "Just like 111 years ago at the time of our great-grandfathers." According to the results of a recent 451 Research survey of almost 1,000 enterprise IT buyers worldwide, 50 percent of respondents said security is the top impediment for IoT deployments. Still, enterprises are moving ahead with IoT initiatives, with 90 percent of enterprises planning to increase IoT spending over the next year. Respondents' mean IoT-related spending is expected to increase by 33 percent over the next 12 months. While 54 percent of respondents said a lack of trained IoT staff is not an issue for their organizations, 46 percent said they're having difficulty filling IoT-related positions. "When it comes to IoT adoption, pragmatism rules," 451 Research director Laura DiDio said in a statement. "The survey data indicates enterprises currently use IoT for practical technology purposes that have an immediate and tangible impact on daily operational business efficiencies, economies of scale and increasing the revenue stream." http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/hackers-disable-door-locks-… At NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/world/europe/hotel-austria-bitcoin-ranso…

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[Human Rights Watch] Trump Team Invents "Massacre" And Blames Refugees For It
by Cecilia Tanaka 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

*Trump Team Invents "Massacre" And Blames Refugees For It: Daily Brief* Plus: The real numbers of people affected by US Muslim Ban; White supremacists and neo-Nazis no longer "extremists" in Trump proposal; New CIA deputy director formerly oversaw torture; Restricting condoms in the Philippines; EU summit in Malta discusses refugees; and Ukraine fighting. https://www.hrw.org/the-day-in-human-rights/2017/02/03 ======= Wish you all an awesome Friday and a lovely weekend! <3 - c. ------- "Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live." - Mae Jemison

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Australian govt idiocy - refuses Aussie and Russian scientists to stop at "Australian" sub-antarctic island
by Zenaan Harkness 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

If anyone needed another reason to oppose "democratic" government .. Too often it's embarrassing being an Australian. Bloody idiots in our "government". Welp, least we protectin' the bird poop and rocks from them Russkies, oh and our own Aussie scientists on board. As if Turnbull wasn't bad enough with his endless "subtlety" on the world stage. Obviously we must have invented foot in mouth syndrome. I'm unfortunately not unfamiliar with that one myself ... terminally Aussie condition it seems. Scientists not allowed to land on sub-Antarctic island http://tass.com/science/928791 "It was planned to make a landing the sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island, but, unfortunately, the Australian side did not issue the required permits, although scientists from this state actively participate in this expedition," said Alexander Makarov, the deputy head of Roshydromet’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute. "

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antifa promoting Hitler's "Truth Will Triumph" speech
by Zenaan Harkness 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

Not surprising really ... front page material today: http://antifascism.org/ (Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ymEKiY1UR8 )

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Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
by grarpamp 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

http://craphound.com/littlebrother/Cory_Doctorow_-_Little_Brother.txt http://craphound.com/ INTRODUCTION I wrote Little Brother in a white-hot fury between May 7, 2007 and July 2, 2007: exactly eight weeks from the day I thought it up to the day I finished it (Alice, to whom this book is dedicated, had to put up with me clacking out the final chapter at 5AM in our hotel in Rome, where we were celebrating our anniversary). I'd always dreamed of having a book just materialize, fully formed, and come pouring out of my fingertips, no sweat and fuss -- but it wasn't nearly as much fun as I'd thought it would be. There were days when I wrote 10,000 words, hunching over my keyboard in airports, on subways, in taxis -- anywhere I could type. The book was trying to get out of my head, no matter what, and I missed so much sleep and so many meals that friends started to ask if I was unwell. When my dad was a young university student in the 1960s, he was one of the few "counterculture" people who thought computers were a good thing. For most young people, computers represented the de-humanization of society. University students were reduced to numbers on a punchcard, each bearing the legend "DO NOT BEND, SPINDLE, FOLD OR MUTILATE," prompting some of the students to wear pins that said, "I AM A STUDENT: DO NOT BEND, SPINDLE, FOLD OR MUTILATE ME." Computers were seen as a means to increase the ability of the authorities to regiment people and bend them to their will. When I was 17, the world seemed like it was just going to get more free. The Berlin Wall was about to come down. Computers -- which had been geeky and weird a few years before -- were everywhere, and the modem I'd used to connect to local bulletin board systems was now connecting me to the entire world through the Internet and commercial online services like GEnie. My lifelong fascination with activist causes went into overdrive as I saw how the main difficulty in activism -- organizing -- was getting easier by leaps and bounds (I still remember the first time I switched from mailing out a newsletter with hand-written addresses to using a database with mail-merge). In the Soviet Union, communications tools were being used to bring information -- and revolution -- to the farthest-flung corners of the largest authoritarian state the Earth had ever seen. But 17 years later, things are very different. The computers I love are being co-opted, used to spy on us, control us, snitch on us. The National Security Agency has illegally wiretapped the entire USA and gotten away with it. Car rental companies and mass transit and traffic authorities are watching where we go, sending us automated tickets, finking us out to busybodies, cops and bad guys who gain illicit access to their databases. The Transport Security Administration maintains a "no-fly" list of people who'd never been convicted of any crime, but who are nevertheless considered too dangerous to fly. The list's contents are secret. The rule that makes it enforceable is secret. The criteria for being added to the list are secret. It has four-year-olds on it. And US senators. And decorated veterans -- actual war heroes. The 17 year olds I know understand to a nicety just how dangerous a computer can be. The authoritarian nightmare of the 1960s has come home for them. The seductive little boxes on their desks and in their pockets watch their every move, corral them in, systematically depriving them of those new freedoms I had enjoyed and made such good use of in my young adulthood. What's more, kids were clearly being used as guinea-pigs for a new kind of technological state that all of us were on our way to, a world where taking a picture was either piracy (in a movie theater or museum or even a Starbucks), or terrorism (in a public place), but where we could be photographed, tracked and logged hundreds of times a day by every tin-pot dictator, cop, bureaucrat and shop-keeper. A world where any measure, including torture, could be justified just by waving your hands and shouting "Terrorism! 9/11! Terrorism!" until all dissent fell silent. We don't have to go down that road. If you love freedom, if you think the human condition is dignified by privacy, by the right to be left alone, by the right to explore your weird ideas provided you don't hurt others, then you have common cause with the kids whose web-browsers and cell phones are being used to lock them up and follow them around. If you believe that the answer to bad speech is more speech -- not censorship -- then you have a dog in the fight. If you believe in a society of laws, a land where our rulers have to tell us the rules, and have to follow them too, then you're part of the same struggle that kids fight when they argue for the right to live under the same Bill of Rights that adults have. This book is meant to be part of the conversation about what an information society means: does it mean total control, or unheard-of liberty? It's not just a noun, it's a verb, it's something you do.

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Statement from a Berkely Antifa FashBash participant
by Razer 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

Image gleaned from twitter

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Literature
by Claudia Steimann 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

I am just reading that book http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23809961-psychopathic-cultures-and-toxic… Psychopathic cultures and toxic empires By Will Black and it describes really good what turns states like Turkey or US into something evil - also describes the same effects within companies. Does anybody here got other must reads on society or politics?

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UC Berkeley "home of the Free Speech Movement", riots and Uni support to stop public talk
by Zenaan Harkness 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

Yes, a talk by Milo, so some would say "no loss there", but the hypocrisy of the Left screaming to put a stop to public talks is, amazing to watch. A bunch of "Razer"s friends here evidently: UC Berkeley Administration Shares Blame for Anti-Free Speech Riot http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/02/02/uc-berkeley-milo-administrat…

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In Defence of Assaulting Fascists
by Razer 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

> “Only one thing could have stopped us – if our adversaries had > understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the > utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.” – Adolf Hitler > "The most effective prophylactic against any infection is to deny it > its conditions of survival." "I take no personal gratification in watching physical assault take place. I recall the trauma of being punched at 14-years old in a racist incident. I was intimidated for years by even the most frivolous fights in high-school and even desisted from playing sports for a long time as a result. I know how intimidating violence can be. Which is why I believe in violence against fascists. The New York Times today reported that Richard Spencer won’t be going on speaking tours for a long time as a result of being assaulted. He’s even afraid to go out for dinner. Before we conclude that that’s indubitably a good thing, I’d like to turn to the topic of collaboration. We expect collaborators to appear in the form of the Devil himself. In other words, recognizable. But of course that’s far from the reality. The Biblical story of how Satan himself transmogrifies into the Devil is itself just as implausible. Collaboration, where it most matters, is passive. Collaboration is reduced to executing “normal” tasks in a programmatic manner. Nothing could be more “natural.” This was the insight of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: modern evil is banal. It is the work of millions of men and women. As she argues in The Origins of Totalitarianism, genocide requires the participation of engineers, physicians, accountants, scientists, journalists, small business owners, corporate executives and civil servants. It is an archipelago of labor in the narrowest sense of the term: tedious and mundane. The most effective prophylactic against any infection is to deny it its conditions of survival. Today our infection is the prospect of collaboration. Evil, according to Arendt, is committed by those who “never make up their minds to be good or evil,” but underlying that is careerism. Eichmann, the chief architect for the extermination of half of European Jewry, had “no motives at all” she argued, “except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement.” And the problem, as Arendt pointed out, was that there were too many Eichmanns. There is no cure for collaboration. The only solution is to prevent the conditions in which passive collaborators have the excuse to say that they were only doing their jobs. There is a crucial lesson to be learned from how Mussolini and Hitler consolidated power. It wasn’t overnight. It took years. And in those years paramilitary groups roamed the streets ravaging any potential threat. The threat of chaos that they incubated was crucial to the conservative governments’ decisions to permit them into the halls of total power. Violence, as any good anthropologist would tell you, is steeped in symbolism. State and, when allowed, non-State violence intends to send a message “We Are The Only Game In Town.” And in their violence, they assert their convictions. Citizens, too busy and exhausted to think politically, are always ready to acquiesce that point faute de mieux: if someone is violent and angry, then their demands, even ideology, must be somewhat rooted valid grievances and ideas. The essence of fascism, as historians like Robert Paxton never fail to remind us, is not in ideas but in emotions. Robbing fascism of its virility and hyper masculine pretence is to rob it of its primary capacity to grow and survive. We have to confront the crucial question: are we more interested in upholding the slogan “Don’t Be Evil” or in making sure that no evil occurs? Is instilling fear in the hearts of fascists or fascist-curious individuals, even at the cost of isolated violence preferable to allowing fascists to consolidate power and therefore commit greater atrocities? In this particular instance, we must utilize fear to our advantage. The continuation of protests and the show of strength must not only intimidate fascists, but also send a clear message to the three most important institutions that fascists require for total power: big business, media and state institutions. They must be constantly fear any form of collaboration with Trump’s administration. They must fear how the nation’s history books will view them but to accomplish that we must compel them to think that future historians will not be fascists. The fascist future must be cancelled, today. We can take it from the tip of fascist reaction today: “The point is that we got a lot of attention, and that alone creates value.” (Trump, The Art of the Deal, p. 57) Take for instance a recent example in Egypt. Large large sections of civil servants and big business sabotaged Morsi’s presidency. Hoping against the grain that he would be overthrown by the military, they felt compelled enough to sacrifice their jobs and careers. But the background to this was fierce street violence against fundamentalist supporters of Morsi and weekly mass protests. They had mistakenly placed their faith in the military, but Americans can take comfort in the fact that a genuine opposition in Congress can represent them politically. Americans who will be torn about collaboration must likewise feel compelled to sacrifice their livelihoods and future; but only if the protest and civil disobedience continue unabated and if there exists a genuine political opposition in Congress. We must be ready to meet their intimidation with greater intimidation. What fascism does is to returns politics to its fundamentals. Those of us who are united in the right of women and LGBTQ folks to their bodies, those of us who believe in the right of life for Black, Native, colored and Muslim communities have to confront that our primary task in the coming months and years is to defend the most basic of political rights: life itself. Politics is back to the visceral for those of us who have long grown accustomed to middle-class bourgeois bubbles. We must consign bourgeois morality to the ash heap before it does us in." https://pulsemedia.org/2017/01/22/in-defence-of-assaulting-fascists/

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How you know Rayzer is a Fascist
by Griffin Boyce 03 Feb '17

03 Feb '17

A CNN article headlined: Milo Yiannopoulos is trying to convince colleges that hate speech is cool. Parroted by some newsfag: "ICYMI this guy was going to Berkeley to target undocumented students, not engage in some kind of Socratic dialogue" "Liberals crying out to defend this guys ability to target most vulnerable people in society should consider deporting themselves to Mars." The topic of talk was cultural appropriation. For example: - "Whites" didn't steal "black" culture, "blacks" appropriated "white" culture. - Anti-fascists are culturally appropriating fascist culture. - Losers with trophies are appropriating success culture. - Shia labeef is approriating homeless culture.

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