Monday Links from the Bench vol. CLXV

[vetran]

Yet the FBI thought it worthwhile to send an agent to Australia to join in the raid on his house last week, and several companies have confirmed that they were hacked in the ways and at the times he describes. (And there's the signed poster from Epic.)

Its blooming cold in the FBI headquarters now, some senior guy fancied a holiday.

Its strange whenever a crime is in a hot place we here 30 officers from the Met went to Antigua, when someone is killed in the Ukraine we hear one officer popped over.

[NickFitz]

Does it have to be an Indian gentleman licking the spoon? I don't remember if it was originally thus.

Yes, it was in an "I'm not racist, but…" post by Cyberman: http://forums.contractoruk.com/gener...tml#post898629

[NickFitz]

Fell into a deep sleep half way through that one.

The guy just sounds like a twatty little Walter Mitty character, who hasn't actually done any of these supposed hacks.

No doubt he also claims to have been a SEAL/SAS operative, who single-handedly rescued a load of hostages.

Yet the FBI thought it worthwhile to send an agent to Australia to join in the raid on his house last week, and several companies have confirmed that they were hacked in the ways and at the times he describes. (And there's the signed poster from Epic.)

[OwlHoot]

[*]The Incredible Rise and Fall of a Hacker Who Found the Secrets of the Next Xbox and PlayStation—And Maybe More - "He'd claimed to know about the next Xbox and PlayStation, claimed to really have two prototype versions of the next Xbox. He said he'd had access to next-gen games, that he had Homefront 2 and Sleeping Dogs 2, that he'd played Gears of War 3 a year before it came out and that—after he drunkenly told Epic about it—they'd sent him a poster... A month after we'd first talked, he'd convinced me he'd done many of the extraordinary things he'd said." Australian police, accompanied by an anonymous FBI officer, raided his home last week; here's what he (claims to have) got away with in the preceding couple of years. ...

Fell into a deep sleep half way through that one.

The guy just sounds like a twatty little Walter Mitty character, who hasn't actually done any of these supposed hacks.

No doubt he also claims to have been a SEAL/SAS operative, who single-handedly rescued a load of hostages.

[Platypus]

Does it have to be an Indian gentleman licking the spoon? I don't remember if it was originally thus.

[Chutney Spoon]

I'm considering it, but am not quite happy it wouldn't be construed as racist and ignored.

If anyone else submits a CUK one, keep us posted... you're welcome to use/adapt mine.

Please do the needful. A portrait to send home to my parents would be most excellent.

[d000hg]

I'm considering it, but am not quite happy it wouldn't be construed as racist and ignored.

If anyone else submits a CUK one, keep us posted... you're welcome to use/adapt mine.

[NickFitz]

Cheers all

Dear Jim,

Please paint an Indian gentleman licking the spoon from the bowl of chutney in an Indian restaurant while a nerdy white guy wipes his knob clean on the curtains. Through the window you can see a fighter jet in which the pilot is eating spaghetti.

kthxbye

I assume you've submitted this request to Jim?

[d000hg]

Dear Jim,

Please paint an Indian gentleman licking the spoon from the bowl of chutney in an Indian restaurant while a nerdy white guy wipes his knob clean on the curtains. Through the window you can see a fighter jet in which the pilot is eating spaghetti.

kthxbye

[vetran]

For the DIY weapons, I looked at number 11 & 19 and looked round for a big black guy covered in Gold.

I love it when a plan comes together!

excellent as usual

[Alias]

Another great edition Mr.Fitz

[NickFitz]

Cold again Ah well, soon be Spring Until then, there's the Internet:

• The CIA Goes To Hollywood: How America’s Spy Agency Infiltrated the Big Screen (and Our Minds) - "Argo and Zero Dark Thirty are only the latest film productions the CIA has influenced in the 15 years since the Agency opened its official liaison office to Hollywood. Tricia Jenkins examines the history of this version of “Hollywood confidential” in The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television. Short and dry, her book raises serious ethical and legal questions about the relationship between the CIA and Hollywood, and the extent to which we consume propaganda from one through the other." Tom Hayden's review examines some of the more dubious aspects of the CIA's behaviour and its apparently cosy relationship with filmmakers.
  
  
• Fifty years ago today… - Fifty years ago last Saturday, to be precise. Eric Idle recalls his first meeting with John Cleese: "...a very tall man in a thick tweed suit with dark hair and piercing dark eyes was introduced to me by Humphrey Barclay. He was very kind and complimentary, and indeed encouraging, for both of them urged me to come along and audition for The Footlights at their next Smoker. I had never heard of The Footlights, A University Revue Club founded in 1883, but it seemed like a fun thing to do and a month later Jonathan Lynn and I were voted in by the Committee..."
  
  
• The Ruins of Villa Epecuen - "Back in the 1920s, a tourist village was established along the shore of Lago Epecuen, a salt lake some 600 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The resort town, named Villa Epucuen, soon had a railroad station, and it thrived for several decades, peaking in the 1970s with a population of more than 5,000. Around the same time, a long-term weather event was delivering far more rain than usual to the surrounding hills for years, and Lago Epecuen began to swell. In 1985, the salty waters broke through an earthen dam, and Villa Epecuen was doomed. A slow-growing flood consumed the town until it reached a depth of 10 meters (33 feet) in 1993. The wet weather later reversed, and the waters began to recede in 2009. AFP photographer Juan Mabromata recently visited the ruins of Villa Epecuen, met its sole inhabitant, and returned with these images."
  
  
• Onion Laws - Many of these old laws from the US are presumably apocryphal, but then again, one can imagine that a hundred years ago, a town of maybe a hundred residents might pass such laws when a powerful resident was offended by somebody's onion breath: "Local residents are prohibited from eating row onions while walking down a street in Northfield, Connecticut. Barbers in Columbia, Pennsylvania, are prohibited from eating onions between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. And in Dyersburg, Tennessee, citizens aren't allowed to enter a movie theater within four hours after having eaten raw onions."
  
  
• Abandoned Apples - "For whatever reasons, humans eventually vacate the places they inhabit, and in doing so, things are left behind. Some of those things happen to be Apple computers, software, and accessories that wallow in dark and dirty places for decades until rediscovered by urban explorers who delight in documenting abandoned urban spaces." For Apple haters, there are several pictures of ones smashed to bits
  
  
• The Incredible Rise and Fall of a Hacker Who Found the Secrets of the Next Xbox and PlayStation—And Maybe More - "He'd claimed to know about the next Xbox and PlayStation, claimed to really have two prototype versions of the next Xbox. He said he'd had access to next-gen games, that he had Homefront 2 and Sleeping Dogs 2, that he'd played Gears of War 3 a year before it came out and that—after he drunkenly told Epic about it—they'd sent him a poster... A month after we'd first talked, he'd convinced me he'd done many of the extraordinary things he'd said." Australian police, accompanied by an anonymous FBI officer, raided his home last week; here's what he (claims to have) got away with in the preceding couple of years.
  
  
• Campbell’s Rules of Comprehension - Eddie Campbell explains some principles that he believes make a comic possible to follow easily: "I have in my l life met one or two people who were so well brought up that they had never read a comic... But I have also met people, pictorially literate and unfazed by contact with the vulgar, who do not know what to make of a modern day comic book. I sympathise. The fact of the matter, make no mistake, is that I am on the side of the perplexed and mystified. Most comics today are visually unintelligible except to a few."
  
  
• DIY Weapons of the Syrian Rebels - "While the rebels are using many modern weapons, they've also come up with their own makeshift solutions. In these weapons workshops, anti-aircraft guns are welded to pickup trucks and armor shields are attached to machine guns and cars. Mortar shell nose cones are turned on lathes and explosives are mixed by hand. Homemade grenades are launched by jury-rigged shotguns or giant slingshots in the urban battlefields of Aleppo and Damascus. Gathered here are a few examples of the hand-built munitions of the Syrian rebels."
  
  
• HDCP is dead. Long live HDCP. A peek into the curious world of HDMI copy protection... - "HDCP (the copyright protection mechanism in HDMI) is broken. I don't mean just a little bit broken, I mean thoroughly, comprehensively, irredeemably and very publicly broken." Adam Laurie demonstrates the brokennness with this detailed guide to hacking an HDMI cable and using freely available hardware and software to extract the private keys of HDMI devices.
  
  
• Jim'll Paint It - Nothing to do with the late Mr. Savile; ask Jim to paint something, and he will: "Please paint me a Tyrannosaurus Rex playing Connect 4 with Heston Blumenthal on a lake of fire whilst a care bear watches them lustfully."
  
  
  

Happy invoicing!