[Non-political] News that makes you Laugh/Cry/Both...

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Apr 10, 2014 7:40 pm

So apparently the story with Heartbleed is that there's a connection test protocol where you send a packet and a length and the computer copies back a number of bytes equal to the length, and you can have the length match the payload length and get back your original data. Or you can not do that and get back up to 64kb of data from wherever in memory it happened to store your packet. Tiny coding fuckups: bringing you horrible security flaws since networks existed.

There are ways of testing that kind of thing, but the OpenSSL team is seriously four guys who also have day jobs.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Apr 10, 2014 7:57 pm

Chamomile wrote:That wasn't true before?

Actually, a decent number of countries have legal personal use piracy. This case was about The Netherlands, which had legalized exactly that and, instead, placed a levy on all forms of electronic storage that went to compensating rightsholders. The European Court told them fuck you you can't do that, locking in the precedent that the publishing interests still get to decide what IP law is going to be, no matter how many studies come out telling us that piracy doesn't fucking matter.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Thu Apr 10, 2014 10:16 pm

And what happens next? Can the EU court actually overrule a national law like this?

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Apr 10, 2014 10:24 pm

nockermensch wrote:And what happens next? Can the EU court actually overrule a national law like this?

We're going to find out. On the one hand, there isn't much point in having a multinational court that can't override at least some laws. On the other hand, the Netherlands might not agree that this falls on the list of what the court can make decisions about, or opt to just openly defy the verdict. Most likely, though, they'll nominally accept the verdict and not actually enforce piracy laws because that's laughably impossible.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Apr 11, 2014 12:57 am

Pretty sure a lot of countries in the EU just go "Ja, ja, we'll get right onto that (after we deal with all the real internet crime, like child porn)" and go about ignoring it.

Until crack teams of lawyers bring dubiously-legal court cases against the Pirate Bay.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Apr 12, 2014 5:08 pm

Bitcoin miners beginning to spend more to mine bitcoins than the coins are worth.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Apr 14, 2014 9:34 pm

http://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/nippl ... te-extraor

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Apr 14, 2014 11:47 pm

Hilarious. I'd download the app, but I already know the stats of my sex life.

http://topekasnews.com/oklahoma-protest ... cancelled/

Oklahoma wants to "secdee" from the union if "harold of Ra" Neil Degresse Tyson's "Satanic Ra Occult" Cosmos is not removed from the air.

I totally want to create a Satanic Ra Occult religion to troll these people now.

Shiritai · Post by **Shiritai** » Tue Apr 15, 2014 1:48 am

Prak_Anima wrote: http://topekasnews.com/oklahoma-protest ... cancelled/

Oklahoma wants to "secdee" from the union if "harold of Ra" Neil Degresse Tyson's "Satanic Ra Occult" Cosmos is not removed from the air.

I totally want to create a Satanic Ra Occult religion to troll these people now.

Huh, so that's what would happen if The Onion didn't even make an attempt at humor.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Apr 15, 2014 1:58 am

Hm. It's funnier when you don't realize it's satire. I'm just going to start assuming that any news report that fills me with misanthropic glee is satire, they all seem to turn out to be.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 4:11 pm

Something Koumei should be interested in-

The, apparently, official Sailor Moon twitter feed just announced that they will release the voice cast and concept art for the lead characters on April 27th, with the producer confirming:

@Sailormoon_20th also posts merch images, like this, which is kind of cool even if you're not a big Sailor Moon fan

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 6:09 pm

Prak_Anima wrote: @Sailormoon_20th also posts merch images, like this, which is kind of cool even if you're not a big Sailor Moon fan

It's a shame I work at a library, where they wouldn't be too happy with me holding the brooch in the air and shouting "MOON PRISM POWAA.... MAKE UP!" every day.

Also noteworthy: adorable Luna hoodies (look like pyjama tops), Luna and Artemis mugs (imagine if there were someone who liked both Sailor Moon and hot drinks), Sailor Moon art-chocolate...

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 7:02 pm

You need jewelry like what I made for my sister!

My sister loves Sailor Moon so much that she walked down the aisle to an orchestral version of the theme song. One day, she told me that she wished she could wear Sailor Moon stuff to work (it wouldn't ever fly). I didn't think much about it until she put malachite jewelry on her wishlist, and then an idea was born (Yes, I know Malachite is actually Kunzite in the *real* version of the show, but that didn't work for her present). Here's what she ended up with (spoilered for size):

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 7:21 pm

That is more awesome than words can convey.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:48 pm

Apparently, the South Korean ferry industry has really sub-standard safety training.

http://news.yahoo.com/death-toll-south- ... 06063.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27107267

http://time.com/71828/south-korea-ferry ... e-junseok/

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 4:31 am

hyzmarca wrote:http://www.(This post is likely SPAM. Please report this post and do not reply to it. -fbmf)/news/world-asia-27107267

What happened here?

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 4:38 am

Looks like the mods implemented a macro to get people to report spammers, keyed to either a particular character string, or just a number of consecutive links.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 4:48 am

If I had to guess, I would say: Kitchen was involved.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 4:55 am

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Looks like the mods implemented a macro to get people to report spammers, keyed to either a particular character string, or just a number of consecutive links.

Looks like it reacts to the .co .uk that the recent kitchen design spammers have been using. However, the links still work.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 5:50 pm

Kaelik wrote:If I had to guess, I would say: Kitchen was involved.

Only when combined with "Design". It also goes off the "co.uk" links

Post by **fbmf** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 5:56 pm

...You Lost Me wrote:
Kaelik wrote:If I had to guess, I would say: Kitchen was involved.
Only when combined with "Design". It also goes off the "co.uk" links

Yes, sorry for the disruption. It's not a bot, because the next link adapted to putting spaces in between to bypass the filter.

[/The Great Fence Builder Speaks]

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Thu Apr 24, 2014 5:42 am

I'm really curious how this works. Like fbmf, I assume a person checked the site to make sure their spam works, but that seems to defeat the purpose of spam (which is based on efficiently sending lots of messages).

Are spambots really smart? Do we need captchas or something?

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Thu Apr 24, 2014 8:47 am

It's not a spambot, it's a dude making 10 cents an hour.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Apr 25, 2014 10:26 am

They're a criminal organisation defrauding people out of large sums of money, or at least they hope to be. Every hundred people that finds their scam gives them a couple that are stupid enough to send them some more. I'd say here isn't a good target, but Silva might be thinking about a new kitchen.

And every time someone clicks from here, they get a referral address on their logs, and that makes them keep on spamming the place. Because eventually they'll get a sucker to click, and that's their whole game.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Apr 25, 2014 3:38 pm

The links are a way of getting higher rankings in Google.

The beginner's trick is to find a site that is small, but has been around a while. Forums get crawled frequently, so if you leave a link to whatever site you're trying to improve the search rank of, Google says, "Hey... This is a reliable site referring to this other one. This other one must be a reliable site, too." And then the other site gets bumped up in the search results.

If you're good at your beginner's trick, you actively participate in the forum and leave the link to the site you want boosted in your signature. If you're not, you just post it there and hope that it won't get deleted.

I don't know if they keep targeting TGD because people are clicking the link, or if they keep targeting the site because our URL has been saved into a text file list of websites that need to be spammed. Either way, it sucks.