North Korea Not Behind Sony Hack?

Sony Pictures computer network was the subject of a massive security breach on Nov. 24 and reams of embarrassing documents were leaked to the public.

Something calling itself the Guardians of Peace using the ironic acronym GOP took credit on Dec. 9 and demanded  that the studio cancel the Seth Rogan comedy “The Interview” that was scheduled to be released Christmas Day.

The film features the killing of North Korean communist dictator Kim Jong-un. North Korea, while praising the hacking, denied responsibility.

On Dec. 11, the GOP released hacked data describing Sony projects aimed at stifling piracy of its products. On Dec. 13, it released data exposing investigations that Sony was bribing Chinese officials.

On Dec. 16, the GOP sent out a notice implying there will be terrorist attacks at theaters showing the movie.

Sony pulls the film on Dec. 17 and announces that  it has  “no further release plans for the film.” President Obama  makes a televised statement  that night saying that Sony shouldn’t have done it and should have checked with him.

Sony CEO Michael Lynton — a one-percenter and a personal friend and major supporter of Obama — responds to the President on Dec. 19 saying  “I did reach out. We definitely spoke to a senior advisor in the White House to talk about the situation. The White House was certainly aware of the situation.” He also says the studio plans to get the movie to the public.

Also, on Dec. 19, the FBI makes it official that North Korea was behind the hacking. It had been leaked to the media two days earlier that North Korea was suspected.

On Christmas Eve, Sony makes “The Interview” accessible on streaming services and gives it a limited theatrical release the next day.

It gets mediocre reviews.

And that gets us to today. Computer security experts are  saying the evidence as to who is the cause for all the fuss now indicates a disgruntled employee working with hackers for piracy groups. They are wondering why the FBI was so quick to release a statement pinning the actions on North Korea.

“When the FBI made the announcement so soon after the initial hack was unveiled, everyone in the [cyber] intelligence community kind of raised their eyebrows at it, because it’s really hard to pin this on anyone within days of the attack,” said Kurt Stammberger of Norse.

Errata Security‘s Robert Graham goes so far as to call the FBI evidence “nonsense.”

The Taia Global security firm, says a linguistic analysis of the hacker’s messages indicates Russian speakers rather than Korean.

For the record, the FBI is sticking to its North Korea claim. But the quickness of its conclusion and the doubts of non-government experts do make one go hmmmm.

For what it’s worth, our favorite conspiracy theory is that Obama is doing this as payback to Lynton to help him pump up an otherwise forgettable film.

Regardless he should be impeached. Even Biden would do a better job and that’s saying a lot.

North Korea Not Behind Sony Hack?

North Korea Not Behind Sony Hack? 

 

High GPA Now Liability

It appears a high grade point average from a top school is now a liability.

At least at Google. The web goliath has spent years analyzing who succeeds at the company and have learned it isn’t the know-it-all with the pedigree, reports QZ.com

Apparently those with high grades lack the integral “intellectual humility”.

In other words, they take credit for when something good happens and blame all but themselves when something otherwise happens.

Further many schools don’t deliver on what they promise. A whole lot of money seems to be going to waste.

Google is now looking for people with learning ability — which means be able to process on the fly and pull together disparate bits of information — and the skill to argue passionately for a point yet be able to concede that someone else has a better idea.

It is turning out that often  the most exceptional people are those without college, says QZ.

High GPA Now Liability

High GPA Now Liability

 

Google Democrat Tool

The Democrats have named uber-billionaire plutocrat Eric Scmidt to its election post-mortem group, Bloomberg.com has revealed.

It’s just something for those of you not inclined to automatically push the D button to think about the next time you use a Google product.

Do you really want the enemy to track your every move?

During the midterm election cycle, Schmidt donated $60,000 to Democratic congressional candidates and chipped in $250,000 to Senate Majority PAC.

We guess the joke is on the OWS types who voted for Obama et al to stick it Wall Street and the “crony capitalists”.

We suggest that for searches one use DuckDuckGo. Their politics may not be the same as ours but truthfully we don’t know as they don’t make an issue of it. Regardless, they don’t track you.

Further, they are based in the neighborhood, Paoli, so that’s a bonus.

For web browsing, avoid Chrome. We use Firefox. If you can’t overlook their recent political cravenness, try Opera or stick to Safari if you have a Mac.

But don’t give aid and comfort to something that is obviously the opponent of freedom and a friend to feudalists

Google Democrat Tool

Google Democrat Tool

Hat tip Bob Guzzardi

3 Billion Internet Users In 2015

eMarketer.com reports that the number of internet users will surpass 3 billion in 2015. As the world’s population is expected to reach 7.2 billion next year this would mean that two out of every five people are online.

It is believed that by the end of this year Brazil will supplant Japan as the world’s four-largest internet user population while Mexico will pass Germany as the eighth largest next year.

India, which is the second-largest English speaking county, is expected to pass the United States as having the second largest internet population in 2016.

China is the largest and expected to stay such.

3 Billion Internet Users In 2015

3 Billion Internet Users In 2015

Apollo-M Sells Music Lesson Via Subscription

Noted Australian musician Gary Turner tells us that we can now get music lessons online via a new Netflix-type subscription service called Apollo-M.Com, which is based just down I-95 in Wilmington, Del.

“Roughly 300 million people in the world play, teach or are learning to play a musical instrument,” Turner said.

Turner is the founder of Koala Music Publications which morphed into LearnToPlayMusic.com.

An Apollo-M subscription goes for $4.95 a month.

An excellent idea.

Apollo-M Sells Music Lesson Via Subscription

Apollo-M Sells Music Lesson Via Subscription

Truthy Was Fed Funded Speech Suppression

Tom Coniglia submitted this link to an article on FrontpageMag.com that describes a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to a data-mining project dubbed “Truthy” that cost taxpayers nearly $1 million.

The grant was ICES: Large Meme Diffusion Through Mass Social Media (Aware #1101743) and was intended, as per the grant’s abstract to “. . . create a web service open to the public for monitoring trends, bursts, and suspicious memes. This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.”

That those with a vested political position seek the authority to declare what speech is “hate” and “subversive propaganda”  in the name of open debate is about as Orwellian as it gets.

The name “Truthy” comes from political satirist and Democrat Party supporter Stephen Colbert. The site itself targeted messages and commentary connected to the words “Tea Party” “GOP” and “conservative,” according to a letter from Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX21) to the NSF.

And Smith wants answers.

And he — along with the rest of us — deserve them.

Smith notes that some have had social media accounts terminated because of “Truthy”.

If government agencies are seen taking sides by much, if not most, of America, then much, if not most, of America will see the government as the enemy.

This is a consequence that would be readily apparent to a kindergartner, and it is a bad thing.

To have a unified nation, government partisanship must become a big taboo. A good, but small, first step would be in exposing those who approved this grant and removing them from their jobs and banning them from any other government job, forever.

Truthy Was Fed Funded Speech Suppression

Truthy Was Fed Funded Speech Suppression

Fake Cellphone Towers, What’s Up With That?

The ultra-secure CryptoPhone 500 came on the market  not that long ago courtesy of ESD America and one of its features is an ability to find things that are not part of the standard cellphone network.

And one of the things it found was  17 fake cellphone towers spread around the country, according to Popular Science.

EDS CEO Les Goldsmith described these towers as “interceptors” which look just like regular cellphone tower but are not part of the official communication network. He said they  allow eavesdropping on calls and text along with pushing spyware to the device.

He said a lot of them were close to military bases. He expressed a concern that perhaps they were not placed by our government but a foreign one such as China something that would be frankly hard to believe possible but for the JV squad now in running our nation’s security.

Note that the 17 were the only ones found.

Fake Cellphone Towers, What's Up With That?

A map showing the locations of the fake cellphone towers found by the CryptoPhone 500 as of August.

Fake Cellphone Towers, What’s Up With That?

 

Comcast Customer Support Is Criminal

Comcast Building Lobby Comcast Customer Support Is CriminalComcast Customer Support Is Criminal. The lobby of the Comcast Building in Philadelphia

Aaron Spain of Chicago was a Comcast customer. He found himself displeased with the product provided by the Philadelphia communications giant and tried to cancel.

He went through the sign-in garbage, got hold of a service rep and was put on hold.

He waited 3 hours and 20 minutes before trying on a different phone. What did he find? He found that the office was closed for the day.

Pretty funny, Aaron, huh?

Actually, the joke is going to be on Comcast. This isn’t the first cancellation horror story  circulating the web involving the liberal — it owns MSNBC and its campaign contributions skew heavily to Democrats— corporation.

Violating contracts leads to legal action, and fraud leads to being charged with crimes.

We suspect lawyers will soon be contacting Mr. Spain, and politically astute state attorney generals will start calling for investigations.

If you own stock in the company sell it now.

Here is the video Aaron put on on YouTube documenting his experience.

 

 Comcast Customer Support Is Criminal

Dropbox Bad Says Snowden

Dropbox Bad Says Snowden

Fourth Amendment advocate and international fugitive Edward Snowden says Dropbox, the cloud storage service, is “very hostile to privacy” reports PCWorld.com.

He is recommending that those with a need for cloud storage use companies that practice  “zero-knowledge”,  means that the data is encrypted before it reaches the cloud and the key remains with the user.

He cited Spider Oak as an example.

Of course, unlike with Dropbox, if you lose your password with Spider Oak you files are lost forever.

Dropbox Bad Says Snowden

Advertising Booms In 2014

Advertisers worldwide will spend $545.40 billion on paid media in 2014,  reports eMarketer.com.

This is a 5.7 percent increase over last year which, more than doubles the growth rate of 2. 6percent from a year ago.

It sites  the FIFA World Cup and the Winter Olympics as factors in the boom but also notes the steady increases in online and mobile advertising “as consumers globally shift their attention to digital devices.”

eMarketer notes that the US is by far the leader in total media ad spending at $180 billion.  On a per capita basis, the U.S. also leads at $565 which is $26.13 more per person than second place Norway.

 

Advertising Booms In 2014

 

Advertising Booms In 2014