Weird News Stories

[BruceVC]

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/hollywood-film-producer-arnon-milchan-confirms-he-was-israeli-spy-1.1560010

 

Interesting story, Arnon Milchan who has produced movies like Pretty Women and Fight Club has admitted he was a spy for Israel for years. What do our American members think about this? Was this just normal Cold War skulduggery or do you think this type of spying at this level is worse as Israel is an ally of the USA?

Edited November 26, 2013 by BruceVC

[Walsingham]

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/hollywood-film-producer-arnon-milchan-confirms-he-was-israeli-spy-1.1560010

 

Interesting story, Arnon Milchan who has produced movies like Pretty Women and Fight Club has admitted he was a spy for Israel for years. What do our American members think about this? Was this just normal Cold War skulduggery or do you think this type of spying at this level is worse as Israel is an ally of the USA?

 

Israel can't afford NOT to watch its friends, IMO. Given the constant activity of the antisraeli lobbies.

[Malcador]

And just spying, not like they blew up an ally's ship or something. That'd be biting the hand that feeds.

 

Social media posts gets sex offender another hearing

 

 

"he “thinks attorneys should know that arial font is not appropriate for motions” followed up with “I might be biased. I think arial is inappropriate for most things”"

 

Truly a bigot.

Edited November 26, 2013 by Malcador

[ShadySands]

Can't say I'm surprised but I also generally assume that every country is spying on every other country in some manner, allies or not

Edited November 26, 2013 by ShadySands

[Walsingham]

And just spying, not like they blew up an ally's ship or something. That'd be biting the hand that feeds.

 

Social media posts gets sex offender another hearing

 

 

"he “thinks attorneys should know that arial font is not appropriate for motions” followed up with “I might be biased. I think arial is inappropriate for most things”"

 

Truly a bigot.

 

I suppose it's hardly surprising, with FB being so normalised as a kind of inside-outside soliloquy. Still crap. 

 

~~

 

Terrible story in the news today:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-25108439

 

The band this ...thing was from FB'd their 'closure' on the admission. Not sure how it's appropriate to FB anything remotely like this.

Edited November 26, 2013 by Walsingham

[Rostere]

 

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/hollywood-film-producer-arnon-milchan-confirms-he-was-israeli-spy-1.1560010

 

Interesting story, Arnon Milchan who has produced movies like Pretty Women and Fight Club has admitted he was a spy for Israel for years. What do our American members think about this? Was this just normal Cold War skulduggery or do you think this type of spying at this level is worse as Israel is an ally of the USA?

 

Israel can't afford NOT to watch its friends, IMO. Given the constant activity of the antisraeli lobbies.

 

 

But he was part of what was roughly an industrial espionage group.

 

Besides I don't think there are any important "anti-Israeli" lobbies to speak of, if you know of one, maybe you can tell me about it, because I'm interested in the matter.

[BruceVC]

 

And just spying, not like they blew up an ally's ship or something. That'd be biting the hand that feeds.

 

Social media posts gets sex offender another hearing

 

 

"he “thinks attorneys should know that arial font is not appropriate for motions” followed up with “I might be biased. I think arial is inappropriate for most things”"

 

Truly a bigot.

 

I suppose it's hardly surprising, with FB being so normalised as a kind of inside-outside soliloquy. Still crap. 

 

~~

 

Terrible story in the news today:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-25108439

 

The band this ...thing was from FB'd their 'closure' on the admission. Not sure how it's appropriate to FB anything remotely like this.

 

 

I saw this on Sky, it really is depraved. I'm sure you will find out that Watkins was abused himself when he was younger. But what is particularly sick is how some of his female fans agreed to give there children to him. If you look at how a paedophile operates and then you consider how influential a singer can be on groupies you have a recipe for disaster

Edited November 27, 2013 by BruceVC

[Walsingham]

 

 

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/hollywood-film-producer-arnon-milchan-confirms-he-was-israeli-spy-1.1560010

 

Interesting story, Arnon Milchan who has produced movies like Pretty Women and Fight Club has admitted he was a spy for Israel for years. What do our American members think about this? Was this just normal Cold War skulduggery or do you think this type of spying at this level is worse as Israel is an ally of the USA?

 

Israel can't afford NOT to watch its friends, IMO. Given the constant activity of the antisraeli lobbies.

 

 

But he was part of what was roughly an industrial espionage group.

 

Besides I don't think there are any important "anti-Israeli" lobbies to speak of, if you know of one, maybe you can tell me about it, because I'm interested in the matter.

 

 

In the UK one cannot even _mention_ Israel in pub or public assembly without getting pelted with verbal brickbats.

 

Certainly many UK MPs participate in anti-Israeli talks and campaigns - albeit typically on policy issues rather than the concept.

 

The US has anti-Israeli lobbies, although I couldn't name any without googling them. I'm not going to google them, leaving myself open to being wrong!

[BruceVC]

 

 

 

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/hollywood-film-producer-arnon-milchan-confirms-he-was-israeli-spy-1.1560010

 

Interesting story, Arnon Milchan who has produced movies like Pretty Women and Fight Club has admitted he was a spy for Israel for years. What do our American members think about this? Was this just normal Cold War skulduggery or do you think this type of spying at this level is worse as Israel is an ally of the USA?

 

Israel can't afford NOT to watch its friends, IMO. Given the constant activity of the antisraeli lobbies.

 

 

But he was part of what was roughly an industrial espionage group.

 

Besides I don't think there are any important "anti-Israeli" lobbies to speak of, if you know of one, maybe you can tell me about it, because I'm interested in the matter.

 

 

In the UK one cannot even _mention_ Israel in pub or public assembly without getting pelted with verbal brickbats.

 

 

 

 

Wow that's interesting, do you think its because of the political decisions that Israel has made or is just anti-Semitism?

[Walsingham]

It's a mix of things IMO. Not predominantly anti-semitism. But perhaps for another thread.

[Raithe]

In relation to that colonial holiday thing...

Forbes - How Small Businesses Can Win on Security and Speed this Cyber-Monday
 

Cyber Monday is looming and more holiday shoppers than ever will buy online, skipping the crowds and snapping up last minute deals and free shipping. Next Monday is expected to produce $1.8 billion in sales – up 13.1% on last year, according to research group, IBISWorld. But, if you’re a small business outsourcing most of your data storage and security to the cloud, it can be confusing to know what you should be doing to make sure your website is fast and secure.

Understand the risks and what you’re responsible for

According to the National Cyber Security Alliance, one in five small businesses fall prey to cybercrime each year. Of those, some 60% go out of business within six months after an attack. “It’s no longer a question of if you’re going to get hacked, it’s when,” said Jerry Irvine, information security expert and CIO at Prescient Solutions, as well as a National Cyber Security Task Force member.

“As much as people are warning about security threats it’s not enough, there are more risks than ever,” he said.

“Hackers know that small businesses don’t always have the same resources for IT and security as a larger business and are increasingly targeting small businesses,” said Anne O’Neill, Senior Director of Small Business Segment Marketing at Symantec. “For hackers, attacking a small business is becoming big business.”

The risk of being held liable for data breaches means small businesses increasingly outsource cyber security to experts. However, the explosion in cloud computing also means that there are more providers (and price points) than ever, making it even more important to double check compliance and due diligence.

Check their credentials

Irvine recommends doing your own security assessments as well as checking that any third party site is Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant. Make sure that third parties are also a member of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), said Pravin Kothari, Founder & CEO of Cipher Cloud, which makes an application that encrypts information before it’s sent to the cloud.

Think about data residency and data privacy

Businesses need to think about how and where their data is being stored. For instance, Canada has stricter data privacy regulations than the U.S., so if you’re using a third party storage provider that stores data all over the world with varying degrees of security, you could be running up against compliance issues. This might also be something to look into as data sovereignty becomes an increasingly big issue, said Paige Leidig, Senior Vice President at Cipher Cloud.

Use SSL certificates

SSL certificates authenticate the identity of your business and show customers that your site is secure by displaying “https” in their browser address bar. This enables encryption, meaning sensitive information, such as online registration and transactions can’t be intercepted or read by anyone other than the intended recipient, said Anne O’Neill, Senior Director of Small Business Segment Marketing at Symantec. “It’s important to keep up-to-date 2048-bit SSL certificates because expired certificates trigger credibility-damaging warnings in the Web browsers of customers or potential customers,” she added.

Create backups not just replications

If you’re using a third party cloud provider, make sure they’re creating a backup of your data, not just a replication, says Irvine. If the website’s hacked and the hacker deletes information, that will also be deleted on the copy. If the provider’s created a backup, it will be a snapshot in time, meaning that it won’t be deleted.

Performance

Having a few tricks up your sleeve can protect your website from falling over at peak times. A content-distribution network (CDN), like Akamai or Cloudflare loads data quickly onto servers at the edge of the network nearest users making it snappier for customers. CDNs can also contain Load Balancers, stretchy frontend servers that sit in front of the retailer’s site, so that if it suddenly gets huge amounts of traffic they disperse the load across this elastic frontend and let people access it.

The problem with using data storage providers like Amazon or Rackspace is that it gets expensive to pay for the extra servers if there’s a sudden seasonal spike in traffic, said Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare.

Cloudflare, which is free, is a network that sits in front of your site and automatically scales up or down automatically depending on demand, stopping malicious traffic like DDoS attacks from coming through as well as making the website faster for customers.

[BruceVC]

http://www.travelocafe.com/2011/01/madrid-oldest-restaurant-in-world.html

 

Guys I had to share this with you, the oldest restaurant in the world. You can get Roast Suckling Pig, imagine the delicious crackling

 

Anyway check how cool the restaurant looks

[Walsingham]

 

Not news but

 

The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor

 

 

I don't think those are stupid. Except the one about only buying for now. That's modern poor. Back when my folks were poor we bought sh** that we knew would LAST.

[Malcador]

Being an obsessive bean counter is a good thing, in my mind.

[Walsingham]

Being an obsessive bean counter is a good thing, in my mind.

 

I believe the point is that you are not counting - for example - gold dubloons. You are counting beans.

[Raithe]

oh the things you throw away....

 

BBC News - Quest for lost harddrive with Bitcoin millions

 

A Newport man has been searching a landfill site in south Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away which is now worth over £4m.

 

James Howells's hard drive contains 7,500 bitcoins - which is a virtual form of currency for use online.

 

It had sat in a drawer for years and he had forgotten it contained the bitcoins, which he obtained in 2009 for almost nothing, when he threw it out.

 

But this week, a single bitcoin's value hit $1,000 (£613) for the first time.

 

It means Mr Howells's collection is now worth $7.5m (£4.6m).

 

A few years ago Mr Howells, who works in IT, had dismantled his computer after spilling a drink on it.

 

"I stored a couple of parts away like the hard drive, and the rest of the bits and pieces which were still working I sold for spares," he told BBC Radio Wales.

 

"I kept the hard drive in a drawer in my office for three years without a second thought - totally forgot about bitcoin all together. I had been distracted by family life and moving house.

"Fast forward to 2013 which is when I had a clearout of my old IT equipment - I hadn't used this drive for over three years, I believed I'd taken everything off it... so it got thrown in the bin."

 

Mr Howells later realised what was left on the hard drive.

 

He added: "I had been hearing a few stories of a chap from Norway who had bought a number of coins for a very low price and had sold them for a high price and that's when I got back into checking the price and seeing what I'd done.

 

"When I found out what the price was, the penny dropped and I realised the coins I have 'mined' were on the drive I had thrown away.

 

"There was not a lot I could do."

 

Mr Howells checked all of his back up files but could not locate the coins so went to the landfill site in south Wales.

 

"When I went to the tip the manager took me up to the current landfill site and when I saw it - it's about the size of a football field - my first thought was 'no chance'," he said.

 

"The manager explained that things that were sent to landfill three or four months ago could be three to five feet deep.

 

"He confirmed my worst fears when he said that.

 

"He did mention that when people were investigating for evidence, they turn up with 15 to 20 people in full protective gear with diggers and dogs as well.

 

"The truth is I haven't got the funds or ability to make that happen at the moment without a definite pay cheque at the end of it."

 

World's first

 

In a letter to the US Senate committee, the FBI said that it recognised virtual currencies offered "legitimate financial services" but added they could be "exploited by malicious actors".

 

In October, the world's first bitcoin ATM opened in Vancouver, Canada. The machine allows users to exchange bitcoins for cash and vice-versa.

 

The virtual currency has also been quickly adopted in China, where one exchange - BTC China - is said to be the most active globally.

 

Bitcoin's use in China has been attributed to it being an effective way of reliably getting money out of the country.

 

Various bitcoin exchanges have been set up around the world, with MTGox - one of the virtual currency's major exchanges - being the most prominent.

 

Mr Howells added: "I still believe in bitcoin. I believe its value is going to go much, much higher and it's still in its early days.

 

"As soon as access to bitcoin is opened up to the general public I think a lot more people will be using it, hence the price will increase further."

[Malcador]

http://www.dailydot.com/news/4chan-stephen-house-fire-livestream/

 

Suicide on live stream, what a world.

[Walsingham]

http://www.dailydot.com/news/4chan-stephen-house-fire-livestream/

 

Suicide on live stream, what a world.

 

Meh. In my day people had to go round to their ex's doorstep to pull this s***.

[Gorth]

Amazon.com going to deploy unmanned drones?

 

You never know, *you* may become the target of an unmanned drone some day.

 

"Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, is testing unmanned drones to deliver goods to customers, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos says.

 

The drones, called Octocopters, could deliver packages weighing up to 2.3kg to customers within 30 minutes of them placing the order, he said.

However, he added that it could take up to five years for the service to start.

 

The US Federal Aviation Administration is yet to approve the use of unmanned drones for civilian purposes."

 

Slightly worrying actually, next thing you know, you are going to be targeted by spam drones...

[Raithe]

io9 - German Conspiracy Nuts Vandalise Khufu's Pyramid

 

 

Two German students, in an effort to prove that the Great Pyramids are 15,000 years older than they really are, chipped off samples from the walls of an ancient burial chamber and brought them back home for analysis. Both Egyptian and German authorities are outraged.

 

 

As reported in News Corp Australia, the two University of Dresden students subscribe to a popular theory among conspiracy theorists that the Pyramids are evidence of a lost civilization. They consider all reactions against this claim to be part of an ancient conspiracy; the "old guard" is hiding the "truth."

 

NCA reports:

The painted cartouche which named Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops) is scrawled in a small compartment above his burial chamber in one of the three Great Pyramids at Giza.

 

Their idea is a popular one: That the Great Pyramids were merely "refurbished" by the Old Kingdom Pharaoh credited with its construction in the 26th Century BC. They argue the official dating of the Pyramids is solely based on the presence of the ancient red cartouche.

 

The two students from Dresden University recently took matters into their own hands: With Egypt's political turmoil distracting security forces, the pair conspired to sample the red paint and smuggle the pigment out of Egypt. They have since asserted the fragments support arguments that the construction of date of the Pyramids was much older than Khufu's reign.

 

Accredited archaeologists have dismissed their claims as conspiratorial nonsense, noting the mountain of evidence clearly demonstrating when the pyramids were built and by whom— like papyri diaries of engineers working on the pyramids, records of trading expeditions to get the construction materials, and the excavation of a massive nearby worker's camp where the builders resided.

 

The German embassy in Cairo has issued a statement condemning the students' action. Egypt's ministry of antiquities criticized the incident, saying it was a "great violation of Egypt's ancient heritage, and the great pyramid in particular - the only surviving monument of the seven wonders of the ancient world."

 

Smuggling samples like this is a violation of international law and UNESCO conventions. The students have been placed on an airport watch list and face immediate arrest should they return to Egypt.

[Hurlshort]

That's an outrage, I hope the University expels them.

[Keyrock]

Vandalizing ancient artifacts, especially for a H2-esque crackpot conspiracy theory, is definitely not cool.

[Walsingham]

*shrug*

 

I find it hard to condemn them for what is ostensibly a scientific pursuit of truth, when I'm sure many tens of thousands of visitors chip bits off for idle amusement.

[ShadySands]

British news staff may face terrorism charges over Snowden leaks

 

British police are examining whether Guardian newspaper staff should be investigated for terrorism offences over their handling of data leaked by Edward Snowden, Britain's senior counter-terrorism officer said on Tuesday.

 

The disclosure came after Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, summoned to give evidence at a parliamentary inquiry, was accused by lawmakers of helping terrorists by making top secret information public and sharing it with other news organizations.

 

The Guardian was among several newspapers which published leaks from U.S. spy agency contractor Snowden about mass surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain's eavesdropping agency GCHQ.

 

Assistant Commissioner Cressida ****, who heads London's Specialist Operations unit, told lawmakers the police were looking to see whether any offences had been committed, following the brief detention in August of a man carrying data on behalf of a Guardian journalist.

 

Security officials have said Snowden's data included details of British spies and its disclosure would put lives at risk. Rusbridger told the committee his paper had withheld that information from publication.

[Raithe]

Heh. Along with the recent news from Amazon talking about using Drone delivery...

 

BBC News - Drones used to Smuggle good into prison

 

Drones appear to have become the latest tool for those wishing to smuggle contraband into prisons.

 

Four people have been arrested after a remote-controlled helicopter was allegedly used to fly tobacco into Calhoun state prison, Georgia.

 

Prison officers noticed the device hovering over the prison yard and alerted the police.

 

A similar attempt in Canada has led a prison officers' union to call for tighter security in jails.

 

 

Prison guards at the Calhoun state jail spotted a drone hovering over the prison yard and alerted police who began a search of the local area.

 

Inside a nearby car they found a six-rotor remote-controlled helicopter, between 1lb and 2lb of tobacco and several mobile phones.

 

Four people were arrested and could face up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of attempting to smuggle contraband into the prison.

 

"It is a surprise. I've never seen a helicopter," Sheriff Josh Hilton told reporters.

 

It follows a similar attempt at the weekend in a prison in Canada.

 

A drone was spotted flying over the Gatineau jail in Quebec on Sunday. Guards there failed to find either the device, its payload or those flying it.

 

Remote-controlled flying devices are becoming the tool of choice for those determined to smuggle in contraband, Stephane Lemaire, president of Quebec's correctional officers' union, tod the Ottawa Sun.

 

"Usually the drones are carrying small packages of drugs or other illicit substances," he said.

 

"Now that drones are relatively cheap to buy, they've become the best way to smuggle drugs inside," he added.

 

He said that the union had put pressure on the government to bolster security to deal with the new methods.

 

Drones, more usually associated with the military, are increasingly being used in civilian life to make small deliveries, from pizzas to vital medicines