Intel's "Direct Data I/O" feature introduced in 2011 has been shown to allow for capturing keystrokes in "keyboard interactive" SSH sessions (archived). Keyboard interactive logins have been a feature of SSH best disabled for some time, but Intel's DDIO backdoor is architected in a way that allows still further shennanigans. The DDIO "optimization" allows peripherals to go further than direct memory address and skip to directly interacting with the CPU's on die cache. Expect the continued documentation of Intel backdoors marketed as optimizations to continue.
Category Archives: Africa
John Bolton Out As US National Security Advisor
John Bolton is out as US National Security Advisor after using the position to systematically reduce US national security as so many of his predecessors have done before him (archived). Different parties are claiming a firing or resignation effected the departure. Bolton's legacy over his tenures in the Trump and Bush II administrations is a reduction of USG ability to effect its policy abroad to levels not seen in a century.
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.
All SEAL Team 7 Leaders Purged By US Navy Brass
The US Navy has purged "elite" SEAL Team 7 of its leaders citing a "breakdown of good order and discipline" (archived). Rear Admirald Colin Green is being publicly credited for execution of the purge, and he has further hinted that the culture of SEAL units is "being questioned" suggesting further purges may be on the way. The US Navy SEAL teams are one of several high training investment, high deployment tempo "special warfare" unit types which have taken over the bulk of the US military's combat operations in situations where the combatants are actually inside the same combat space.
Black South Africans Turn Violently Against Other Black Africans As Migration Raises Tensions
Attacks on economic migrants to South Africa have lead the Nigerian government to threaten "definitive" action to protect Nigerian citizens that have migrated to South Africa (archived). South African Foreign Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor cited the existence of Afrophobia as a problem which ought to be addressed as South Africa closed their embassy in Nigeria due to retaliatory violence (archived). South African has a population of 55 million with an official near 29 percent unemployment rate. Nigeria has a population of nearly 190 million and reported an official unemployment rate of 23.1 for 2018.
Illinois: Police Department Child Groomer Arrested For Child Porn
Mitchell Rowan of the Gurnee, Illinois Police Department was arrested earlier this week on a felony warrant for possession of child pornography (archived). Rowan had been employed by the Gurnee Police department to advise their "Police Explorers' Youth Program" where he groomed children for future careers in "law enforcement" while having achieved all of 23 years of age himself.
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.
Amazon Begins Dictating Terms To Local Police As It Builds Residential Video Surveillance Network
USG Surveillance firm Amazon has begun dictating terms to local police agencies in the United States (archived). Amazon is compelling agencies which have "partnered" with them in a program related to surveillance cameras dressed as doorbells and attached to private homes, to use Amazon's preferred marketing points when discussing the program.
The program involves a portal that Amazon offers to local "law enforcement" from which the law enforcement agencies can "request" footage from particular deployed cameras. The cameras themselves are allegedly deployed primarily through sales to consumers though a substantial fraction of deployed cameras have been distributed through a number of "donation", "contest", and "sweepstakes" gimmicks.
Magistrate Judge, Rules Of Federal Procedure, Common Law, And Hoaxtoshi Collide In Absolutley Schizophrenic Ruling
The ongoing litigation between Craig 'Hoaxtoshi' Wright and the estate of the late David Kleiman is leading to the accumulation of substantial insanity in the US courts circus. US Magistrate Bruce Reinhart of the Southern Distict of Florida recently issued an order on the Kleiman estate's motion to compel. As Hoaxtoshi has spent years filing contradictory claims in a wide number of jurisdictions while consistently raising the impossibility of verifying his claims as an affirmative defense, Magistrate Reinhart found himself in the awkward position of applying sanctions against Wright without regard for how the sanctions might conflict with reality.
As a mere magistrate, Reinhart cannot wield criminal contempt of court as a weapon against Wright for being a medacious piece of shit, nor did he find it prudent to recommend an actual judge pursue civil contempt of court charges. Instead he decided to enter into precendent that a number of claims in the case that are to be held as established facts for the purpose of applying sanctions against Wright, with Reinhart using the weak hedge that it is not the court's role to establish the truth of Wright's claims. This is a particularly weak hedge in light of Wright's ongoing bad behavior creating infinite space for more "facts" to be "established" for the purpose of the case, without any regard for whether truth in the case responds to truth in the world.
Wright now has a ready avenue to have the court affirm all of his most grandoise claims by baiting the court to sanction him and further establish "facts" for the purpose of the case. In light of the absolute inability of the US courts to enforce anything, baiting potentially tens of billions of USD in judgements against him is the right move in Wright's situation in order to create a record supporting his delusions, even if all the support is hedged with the "for the purpose of this case" caveat.
The full text of the order is presented below: Continue reading
Assholes Fork GIMP Over 'Problematic' Name
A number of shitgnomes have forked the GNU Image Manipulation Program due to terminal butthurt over the project's short form name GIMP (archived). This appears to simply be the latest in a long line of project coups carried out with varying degrees of success by committee. The fork, which should be assumed toxic, calls itself "Glimpse" in a twist that seems no less ableist than GIMP.