A ballot measure being voted on today in Ohio would legalize marijuana while explicitly restricting permitted production to a cartel of 10 farmers. Another measure on the ballot today in Ohio would prohibit the use of ballot initiatives to create protected cartels.
IBM Approves Third Party OS/2 Distro
According to TechRepublic IBM has approved the marketing of a third party OS/2 distribution produced by an outfit calling itself Arca Noae (archived). The updated OS/2 is supposed to include support for more modern hardware including USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 along with ALSA sound. This development suggest that certain perennial buyers of Microsoft Windows might be in the market for a proprietary replacement.
Ransomware Ring Busted, "Decryptors" Rushed by Adware Vendors
Shortly after an FBI agent publicly encouraged ransomware victims to pay off their attackers, some arrests and leaks have lead to the release of a number of private keys maintained by some ransomware authors. Allegedly all of the keys for Coinvault and Bitcryptor ransomware have been acquired and persons alleged to have connections to the schemes have been arrested. Adware vendors Bitdefender (archived) and Kaspersky Labs (archived) have released free adware1 tools to decrypt files related to these ransomware products, though caution is advised as the decryption tools from these providers and those from others have the potential to be at least as malicious as the original ransomware.
It is important to accurately categorize software according to what it really does instead of what it is marketed as. Their free products advertise their paid products and their paid products advertise still more premium paid products. ↩
000webhost Penetrated: 13 Million Plaintext Passwords Compromised
It's been said before but it bears repeating that if you're not paying for a service, you are the service. Furthermore, if you are the service, you get what you pay for, which in the realm of digital security, means that free-loaders are free-basing if they think that their data is in any way secure. Continue reading
Busybox Drops systemd Support
In a commit dated October 22nd, BusyBox maintainer Denys Vlasenko announced the removal of systemd support from the minimalist unix toolkit (archived). Vlasenko offered as a comment on the commit:
systemd people are not willing to play nice with the rest of the world. Therefore there is no reason for the rest of the world to cooperate with them.
Qntra (S.QNTR) October 2015 Report
US DoD Extracts Guilty Pleas From Mom and Pop Competitors
The US Navy operating under the larger umbrella of the United States Department of Defense managed to extract guilty pleas from a husband and wife accused of marketing heroin on a United States warship (archived). The couple's marketing of heroin of course makes them competitors to the organized heroin operations occurring in the United States Department of Defense whose activity has lead to heroin overtaking many other drugs of abuse over the course of the United State's adventure in Afghanistan (archived).
Judge Grants Local Cop Immunity as Federal Agent
Federal Judge Lee Yeakel has granted immunity to former Austin, Texas police detective Charles Kleinert on manslaughter charges (archived). Yeakel justified his finding of immunity as Kleinert was working on a joint task force with Federal agents, and Yeakel justified the decision to grant immunity rather than investigate the crime thusly: Continue reading
Billion Dollar Blimp Victim of Police Shooting
The Associated Press reports that once its rampage ended in its descent to the ground the Billion Dollar Blimp was fired upon by Pennsylvania State Police officers armed with shotguns until its complete deflation (archived). The Associated Press report also includes a minimum damage estimate of 2,000,000 United States dollars.
Illinois Universities Follow State in Credit Rating Freefall
Six Illinois public universities has their credit rating lowered by Moody’s Investors Service following in the footsteps of the Illinois state government. Southern Illinois Univesity and Northern Illinois University were lowered to Baa1 matching the state government, Northeastern Illinois University was downgraded to Baa2, and three more universities1 were downgraded to Baa3 status (archived). The budget standoff in Illinois continues with lottery winnings continuing to be rationed and labor unrest including the East Saint Louis teacher's strike is ongoing. There are no publicly facing indications that Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner and the legislature are anywhere near resolving the Illinois budget situation.
Western Illinois University, Eastern Illinois University, and Governor's State University ↩